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SOCIAL 




BY 



HENRY GEORGE 



AUTHOR OF "PROGRESS AND POVERTY, 
"protection or FREE TRADE," "A 
PERPLEXED PHILOSOPHER," "THE CONDI- 
TION OF LABOR," "THE LAND QUESTION," 
"PROPERTY IN LAND," ETC. ft /t /t ft ^ 




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/ 



77'- 



SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 



Social Problems 



BY 



HEISTRY GEORGE 



"There ia in human affairs one order which is the best. That order 
is not always the one which exists ; but it is the order which should 
exist for the greatest good of humanity. God knows it, and wills it : 
man's duty it is to discover and establish it.''^—Emile de Laveleye. 



NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY & McCLUEE CO. 

1900 






Then shall they also answer him, saying, ^^Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a 
stranger, or naked, or sich, or in prison, and did 

not minister unto thee f " 

Then shall he answer them, saying, " Verily I 
say unto you. Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of 
the least of these, ye did it not to me.'''' 



Wimp wm^ 

SEf a I Mi 



COPTBIGHT, 1883, BT HeNRT GEOBGK 



TO THE MEMORY 



FEA:N'CIS GEORGE SHAW. 



"Yea," saith the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, and their 
'dorks do foUow them." 



KOTE. 



This book was written in New York in 1883, whicli will ex- 
plain references made in its pages to time and place. My en- 
deavor has been to present the momentous social problems of 
our time, unincumbered by technicalities, and without that 
abstract reasoning which some of the principles of Political 
Economy require for thorough explanation. I have spoken 
in this book of some points not touched upon, or but lightly 
touched upon, in ' ' Progress and Poverty, " but there are 
other points as to which I think it would be worth the 
while of those who may be interested by this book to read 

that. 

HENRY GEORGE. 



CO]^TE]^TS. 



CHAPTER 

I. The increasing importance of social questions . 9 

II. Political dangers 23 

III. Coming increase of social pressure 36 

IV. Two opposing tendencies 49 

V. The march of concentration 62 

VI. The wrong in existing social conditions ... 74 

VII. Is it the best of all possible worlds ? . . . . 86 

VIII. That we all might be rich 101 

IX. First principles 116 

X. The rights of man 130 

XI. Dumping garbage 147 

XII. Over-production 163 

XIII. Unemployed labor 179 

XIV. The effects of machinery 192 

XV. Slavery and slavery 204 

XVI. Public debts and indirect taxation 221 

XVII. The functions of government 234 

XVIII. "What we must do 264 

XIX. The great reform 275 

XX. The American farmer 297 

XXI. City and country . . 316 

XXII. Conclusion 325 

APPENDIX. 

I. Condition of English agricultural laborers. Wil- 
liam Saunders 333 

II. A piece of land. Francis O. Shaw . . . . 337 



SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ESrCEEASmG IMPOETANCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 

Theee come moments in our lives that summon 
all our powers — when we feel that, casting away 
illusions, we must decide and act witn our utmost 
intelligence and energy. So in the lives of peoples 
come periods specially calling for earnestness and 
intelligence. 

We seem to have entered one of these periods. 
Over and again have nations and civilizations been 
confronted with proDiems wnicn, like the riddle 
of the Sphinx, not to answer was to be destroyed ; 
but never before have problems so vast and intri- 
cate been presented. This is not strange. That the 
closing years of this century must bring up momen- 
tous social questions follows from the material and 
intellectual progress that has marked its course. 

Between the development of society and the de- 
velopment of species there is a close analogy. In 
the lowest forms of animal life there is little differ- 
ence of parts ; both wants and powers are few and 



10 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

simple ; movement seems automatic ; and instincts 
are scarcely distinguishable from those of the veg- 
etable. So homogeneous are some of these living 
things, that if cut in pieces, each piece still lives. 
But as life rises into higher manifestatioHS, simpli- 
city gives way to complexity, the parts develop into 
organs having separate functions and reciprocal 
relations, new wants and powers arise, and a greater 
and greater degree of intelligence is needed to secure 
food and avoid danger. Did fish, bird or beast pos- 
sess no higher intelligence than the polyp, Nature 
could bring them forth only to die. 

This law — that the increasing complexity and 
delicacy of organization which give higher capacity 
and increased power are accompanied by increased 
wants and dangers, and require, therefore, in- 
creased intelligence— runs through nature. In the 
ascending scale of life at last comes man, the most 
highly and delicately organized of animals. Yet not 
only do his higher powers require for their use a 
higher intelligence than exists in other animals, but 
without higher intelligence he could not live. His 
skin is too thin ; his nails too brittle ; he is too 
poorly adapted for running, climbing, swimming or 
burrowing. Were he not gifted with intelligence 
greater than that of any beast, he would perish from 
cold, starve from inability to get food, or be exter- 
minated by animals better equipped for the struggle 
in which brute instinct suffices. 



mPOETANCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 11 

In man, however, the intelligence which increases 
all through nature's rising scale passes at one bound 
into an intelligence so superior, that the difference 
seems of kind rather than degree. In him, that 
narrow and seemingly unconscious intelligence that 
we call instinct becomes conscious reason, and the 
godlike power of adaptation and invention makes 
feeble man nature's king. 

But with man the ascending line stops. Animal 
life assumes no higher form ; nor can we affirm that, 
in all his generations, man, as an animal, has a whit 
improved. But progression in another line begins. 
Where the development of species ends, social de- 
velopment commences, and that advance of society 
that we call civilization so increases human powers, 
that between savage and civilized man there is a 
gulf so vast as to suggest the gulf between the highly 
organized animal and the oyster glued to the rocks. 
And with every advance upon this line new vistas 
open. "When we try to think what knowledge and 
power progressive civilization may give to the men 
i)f the future, imagination fails. 

In this progression which begins with man, as in 
that which leads up to him, the same law holds. 
Each advance makes a demand for higher and 
higher intelligence. With the beginnings of society 
arises the need for social intelligence — for that con- 
sensus of individual intelligence which forms a pub- 
lic opinion, a public conscience, a public will, and 



12 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

is manifested in law, institutions and administra- 
tion. As society develops, a liiglier and higher 
degree of this social intelligence is required, for the 
relation of individuals to each other becomes more 
intimate and important, and the increasing com- 
plexity of the social organization brings liability to 
new dangers. 

In the rude beginning, each family produces its 
own food, makes its own clothes, builds its own 
house, and, when it moves, furnishes its own trans- 
portation. Compare with this independence the 
intricate interdependence of the denizens of a mod- 
ern city. They may supply themselves with greater 
certainty, and in much greater variety and abund- 
ance, than the savage ; but it is by the co-operation 
of thousands. Even the water they drink, and the 
artificial light they use, are brought to them by 
elaborate machinery, requiring the constant labor 
and watchfulness of many men. They may travel 
at a speed incredible to the savage ; but in doing so 
resign life and limb to the care of others. A broken 
rail, a drunken engineer, a careless switchman, may 
hurl them to eternity. And the power of applying 
labor to the satisfaction of desire passes, in the same 
way, beyond the direct control of the individual. 
The laborer becomes but part of a great machine, 
which may at any time be paralyzed by causes 
beyond his power, or even his foresight. Thus does 
the well-being of each become more and more de- 



IMPOETANCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 13 

pendent upon the well-being of all — the individual 
more and more subordinate to society. 

And so come new dangers. The rude society 
resembles the creatures that though cut into pieces 
will live ; the highly civilized society is like a highly 
organized animal : a stab in a vital part, the sup- 
pression of a single function, is death. A savage 
village may be burned and its people driven off — 
but, used to direct recourse to nature, they can 
maintain themselves. Highly civilized man, how- 
ever, accustomed to capital, to machinery, to the 
minute division of labor, becomes helpless when 
suddenly deprived of these and thrown upon nature. 
Under the factory-system, some sixty persons, with 
the aid of much costly machinery, co-operate to the 
making of a pair of shoes. But, of the sixty, not 
one could make a whole shoe. This is the tendency 
in all branches of production, even in agriculture. 
How many farmers of the new generation can use 
the flail ? How many farmers' wives can now make 
a coat from the wool ? Many of our farmers do not 
even make their own butter or raise their own veg- 
etables ! There is an enormous gain in productive 
power from this division of labor, which assigns to 
the individual the production of but a few of the 
things, or even but a small part of one of the things, 
he needs, and makes each dependent upon others 
with whom he never comes in contact ; but the 
social organization becomes more sensitive. A 



14: SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

primitive village communitj may pursue the even 
tenor of its life without feeling disasters which over- 
take other villages but a few miles off ; but in the 
closely knit civilization to which we have attained, a 
war, a scarcity, a commercial crisis, in one hemis- 
phere produces powerful effects in the other, while 
shocks and jars from which a primitive community 
easily recovers would to a highly civilized community 
mean wreck. 

It is startling to think how destructive in a civili- 
zation like ours would be such fierce conflicts as fill 
the history of the past. The wars of highly civi- 
lized countries, since the opening of the era of steam 
and machinery, have been duels of armies rather 
than conflicts of peoples or classes. Our only 
glimpse of what might happen, were passion fully 
aroused, was in the struggle of the Pans Commune. 
And, since 1870, to the knowledge of petroleum has 
been added that of even more destructive agents. 
The explosion of a little nitro-glycerine under a few 
water-mains would make a great city uninhabitable ; 
the blowing up of a few railroad bridges and tun- 
nels would bring famine quicker than the wall of 
eircumvallation that Titus drew around Jerusalem ; 
the pumping of atmospheric air into the gas-mains, 
and the application of a match, would tear up every 
street and level every house. The Thirty Years' 
War set back civilization in Germany ; so fierce a 
war now would all but destroy it. Not merely have 



IMPOETANCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. lo 

destructive powers vastly increased, but the wliole 
social organization has become vastly more delicate. 
In a simpler state master and man, neighbor and 
neighbor, know each other, and there is that touch 
of the elbow which, in times of danger, enables 
society to rally. But present tendencies are to the 
loss of this. In London, dwellers in one house do 
not know those in the next ; the tenants of adjoining 
rooms are utter strangers to each other. Let civil 
conflict break or paralyze the authority that pre- 
serves order and the vast population would become 
a terror-stricken mob, without point of rally or prin- 
ciple of cohesion, and your London would be sacked 
and burned by an army of thieves. London is only 
the greatest of great cities. "What is true of London 
is true of New York, and in the same measure true 
of the many cities whose hundreds of thousands are 
steadily growing toward millions. These vast ag- 
gregations of humanity, where he who seeks isola- 
tion may find it more truly than in the desert ; 
where wealth and poverty touch and jostle ; where 
one revels and another starves within a few feet of 
each other, yet separated by as great a gulf as that 
fixed between Dives in Hell and Lazarus in Abra= 
ham's bosom — they are centers and types of our civ- 
ilization. Let jar or shock dislocate the complex 
and delicate organization, let the policeman's club 
be thrown down or wrested from him, and the foun- 
tains of the great deep are opened, and quicker than 



16 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

ever before chaos comes again. Strong as it may 
seem, our civilization is evolving destructive forces. 
Not desert and forest, but citj slums and country 
roadsides are nursing the barbarians who may be to 
the new what Hun and Vandal were to the old. 

Nor should we forget that in civilized man still 
lurks the savage. The men who, in past times, 
oppressed or revolted, who fought to the death in 
petty quarrels and drunk fury with blood, who burnt 
cities and rent empires, were men essentially such 
as those we daily meet. Social progress has ac- 
cumulated knowledge, softened manners, refined 
tastes and extended sympathies, but man is yet 
"capable of as blind a rage as, when clothed in skins, 
he fought wild beasts with a flint. And present 
tendencies, in some respects at least, threaten to 
kindle passions that have so often before flamed in 
destructive fury. 

There is in all the past nothing to compare with 
the rapid changes now going on in the civilized 
world. It seems as though in the European race, 
and in the nineteenth century, man was just begin- 
ning to live — just grasping his tools and becoming 
conscious of his powers. The snail's pace of crawl- 
ing ages has suddenly become the headlong rush of 
the locomotive, speeding faster and faster. This rapid 
progress is primarily in industrial methods and ma- 
terial powers. But industrial changes imply social 
changes and necessitate political changes. Progress- 



IMPOKTANCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 17 

ive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow 
clothes. Social progress always requires greater in- 
telligence in the management of public affairs ; but 
this the more as progress is rapid and change 
quicker. 

And that the rapid changes now going on are 
bringing up problems that demand most earnest 
attention may be seen on every hand. Symptoms 
of danger, premonitions of violence, are appearing 
all over the civilized world. Creeds are dying, be- 
liefs are changing ; the old forces of conservatism 
are melting away. Political institutions are failing, 
as clearly in democratic America as in monarchical 
Europe. There is growing unrest and bitterness 
among the masses, whatever be the form of govern- 
ment, a blind groping for escape from conditions 
becoming intolerable. To attribute all this to the 
teachings of demagogues is like attributing the 
fever to the quickened pulse. It is the new wine 
beginning to ferment in old bottles. To put into a 
sailing-ship the powerful engines of a first-class 
ocean steamer would be to tear her to pieces with 
thdr play. So the new powers rapidly changing 
all the relations of society must shatter social and 
political organizations not adapted to meet their 
strain. 

To adjust our institutions to growing needs and 
changing conditions is the task which devolves upon 
us. Prudence, patriotism, human sympathy, and 



li 



SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 



religious sentiment, alike call upon us to undertake 
it. There is danger in reckless change ; but greater 
danger in blind conservatism. The problems begin- 
ning to confront us are grave — so grave that there 
is fear they may not be solved in time to prevent 
great catastrophes. But their gravity comes from 
indisposition to frankly recognize and boldly grap- 
ple with them. 

These dangers, which menace not one country 
alone, but modern civilization itself, do but show 
that a higher civilization is struggling to be born — 
that the iieeds and the aspirations of men have 
outgrown conditions and institutions that before 
sufficed. 

A civilization which tends to concentrate wealth 
and power in the hands of a fortunate few, and to 
make of others mere human machines, must in- 
evitably evolve anarchy and bring destruction. But 
a civilization is possible in which the poorest could 
have all the comforts and conveniences now en- 
joyed by the rich ; in which prisons and almshouses 
would be needless, and charitable societies un- 
thought of. Such a civilization only waits for the 
social intelligence that will adapt means to ends. 
Powers that might give plenty to all are already in 
our hands. Though there is poverty and want, 
there is, yet, seeming embarrassment from the very 
excess of wealth-producing forces. " Give us but a 
market," say manufacturers, "and we will supply 



IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 19 

goods witliout end!" "Give us but work!" cry 
idle men ! 

The evils that begin to appear spring from the 
fact that the application of intelligence to social 
affairs has not kept pace with the application of in- 
telligence to individual needs and material ends. 
Natural science strides forward, but political science 
lags. With all our progress in the arts which 
produce wealth, we have made no progress in 
securing its equitable distribution. Knowledge has 
vastly increased ; industry and commerce-Jar ve been 
revolutionized ; but whether free trade or "protection 
is best for a nation we are not yet agreed. We have 
brought machinery to a pitch of perfection that, fifty 
years ago, could not have been imagined ; but, in 
the presence of political corruption, we seem as 
helpless as idiots. The East Kiver bridge is a 
crowning triumph of mechanical skill ; but to get it 
built a leading citizen of Brooklyn had to carry to 
New York sixty thousand dollars in a carpet-bag to 
bribe New York aldermen. The human soul that 
thought out the great bridge is prisoned in a crazed 
and broken body that lies bed-fast, and could only 
watch it grow by peering through a telescope. 
Nevertheless, the weight of the immense mass is 
estimated and adjusted for every inch. But the 
skill of the engineer could not prevent condemned 
wire being smuggled into the cable. 



20 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

The jjrogress of civilization requires that more 
and more intelligence be devoted to social aftairs, 
and this not the intelligence of the few, but that of 
the many. We cannot safely leave politics to poli- 
ticians, or political economy to college professors. 
The people themselves must think, because the 
people alone can act. 

In a "journal of civilization" a professed teacher 
declares the saving word for society to be that each 
shall mind his own business. This is the gospel of 
selfishness, soothing as soft flutes to those who, 
having fared well themselves, think everybody 
should be satisfied. But the salvation of society, 
the hope for the free, full development of humanity, 
is in the gospel of brotherhood — the gospel of Christ. 
Social progress makes the well-being of all more 
and more the business of each ; it binds all closer 
and closer together in bonds from which none 
can escape. He who observes the law and the pro- 
prieties, and cares for his family, yet takes no in- 
terest in the general weal, and gives no thought to 
those who are trodden under foot, save now and 
then to bestow alms, is not a true Christian. Nor 
is he a good citizen. The duty of the citizen is 
more and harder than this. 

The intelligence required for the sol ving of social 
problems is not a mere thing of the intellect. It 
must be animated with the religious sentiment and 



IMPOBTAJSrCE OF SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 21 

warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must 
stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the 
self-interest of the few or the many. It must seek 
justice. For at the bottom of e^ery social problem 
we will find a social wrong. 



CHAPTER n. 

POLITICAL DAISTGEKS. 

The American Republic is to-day unquestionably 
foremost of the nations — the van-leader of modern 
civilization. Of all the great peoples of the Euro- 
pean family, her people are the most homogeneous, 
the most active and most assimilative. Their aver- 
age standard of intelligence and comfort is higher ; 
they have most fully adopted modern industrial im- 
provements, and are the quickest to utilize discovery 
and invention ; their |)olitical institutions are most 
in accordance with modern ideas, their position ex- 
empts them from dangers and difficulties besetting 
the European nations, and a vast area of unoccupied 
land gives them room to grow. 

At the rate of increase so far maintained, the 
English-speaking people of America will, by the 
close of the century, number nearly one hundred 
million — a population as large as owned the sway 
Df Rome in her palmiest days. By the middle of 
the next century — a time which children now born 
will live to see — they will, at the same rate, number 
more than the present population of Europe ; and 
by its close nearly equal the population which, at 

22 



POLITICAL DANGERS. 23 

the beginning of this century, the whole earth was 
believed to contain. 

But the increase of power is more rapid than the 
increase of population, and goes on in accelerating 
progression. Discovery and invention stimulate 
discovery and invention ; and it is only when we 
consider that the industrial progress of the last fifty 
years bids fair to pale before the achievements of 
the next that we can vaguely imagine the future 
that seems opening before the American people. 
The center of wealth, of art, of luxury and learning, 
must pass to this side of the Atlantic even before 
the center of population. It seems as if this conti- 
nent had been reserved — shrouded for ages from the 
rest of the world — as the field upon which European 
civilization might freely bloom. And for the very 
reason that our growth is so rapid and our progress 
so swift ; for the very reason that all the tendencies 
of modern civilization assert themselves here more 
quickly and strongly than anywhere else, the prob- 
lems which modern civilization must meet, will here 
first fully present themselves, and will most imperi- 
ously demand to be thought out or fought out. 

It is difficult for any one to turn from the history 
of the past to think of the incomparable greatness 
promised by the rapid growth of the United States 
without something of awe — something of that feel- 
ing which induced Amasis of Egypt to dissolve his 
alliance with the successful Polycrates, because 



24 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

"the gods do not permit to mortals such pros- 
perity." Of this, at least, we may be certain : the 
rapidity of our development brings dangers that can 
only be guarded against by alert intelligence and 
earnest patriotism. 

There is a suggestive fact that must impress any 
one who thinks over the history of past eras and 
preceding civilizations. The great, Wealthy and 
powerful nations have always lost their freedom ; it 
is only in small, poor and isolated communities that 
Liberty has been maintained. So true is this that 
the poets have always sung that Liberty loves the 
rocks and the mountains ; that she shrinks from 
wealth and power and splendor, from the crowded 
city and the busy mart. So true is this that philo- 
sophical historians have sought in the richness ot 
material resources the causes of the corruption and 
enslavement of peoples. 

Liberty is natural. Primitive perceptions are of 
the equal rights of the citizen, and political organi- 
zation always starts from this base. It is as social 
development goes on that we find power concen- 
trating, and institutions based upon the equality of 
rights passing into institutions which make the many 
the slaves of the few. How this is we may see. In 
all institutions which involve the lodgment of gov- 
erning power there is, with social growth, a tendency 
to the exaltation of their function and the centraliza- 
tion of their power, and in the stronger of these insti- 



POLITICAL DANGERS. 25 

tutions a tendency to the absorption of the powers 
of the rest Thus the tendency of social growth is to 
make government the business of a special class. 
And as numbers increase and the power and im- 
portance of each become less and less as compared 
with that of all, so, for this reason, does govera« 
ment tend to pass bej^ond the scrutiny and control 
of the masses. The leader of a handful of warriors, 
or head man of a little village, can only command 
or govern by common consent, and any one ag- 
grieved can readily appeal to his fellows. But when 
the tribe becomes a nation and the village expands 
to a populous country, the powers of the chieftain, 
without formal addition, become practically much 
greater. For with increase of numbers scrutiny oi 
his acts becomes more difficult, it is harder and 
harder to successfully appeal from them, and the 
aggregate power which he directs becomes irresisti- 
ble as against individuals. And gradually, as 
power thus concentrates, primitive ideas are lost, 
and the habit of thought grows up which regards 
the masses as born but for the service of their rulers. 
Thus the mere growth of society involves danger 
of the gradual conversion of government into some- 
thing independent of and beyond the people, and 
the gradual seizure of its powers by a ruling class- 
though not necessarily a class marked off by per- 
sonal titles and a hereditary status, for, as history 
$hows, personal titles and hereditary status do rot 



26 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

accompany the concentration of power, but follow* 
it. The same methods which, in a httle town where 
each knows his neighbor and matters of common 
interest are under the common eye, enable the citi- 
zens to freely govern themselves, may, in a great 
city, as we have in many cases seen, enable an or- 
ganized ring of plunderers to gain and hold the 
government. So, too, as we see in Congress, and 
even in our State Legislatures, the growth of the 
country and the greater number of interests make 
the proportion of the votes of a representative, of 
which his constituents know or care to know, less 
and less. And so, too, the executive and judicial 
departments tend constantly to pass beyond the 
scrutiny of the people. 

But to the changes produced by growth are, with 
us, added the changes brought about by improved 
industrial methods. The tendency of steam and 
of machinery is to the division of labor, to the con- 
centration of wealth and power. Workmen are 
becoming massed by hundreds and thousands in the 
employ of single individuals and firms ; small store- 
keepers and merchants are becoming the clerks and 
salesmen of great business houses ; we have already 
coi'porations whose revenues and pay-rolls belittle 
those of the greatest States. And with this con- 
centration grows the facility of combination among 
these great business interests. How readily the 
railroad companies, the coal operators, the steel 



POLITICAL DAJi^GERS 2T 

producers, even the matcli manufacturers, combine, 
either to regulate prices or to use the powers of gov* 
ernment ! The tendency in all branches of industry 
is to the formation of rings against which the indi- 
vidual is helpless, and which exert then- power upon 
government whenever their interests may thus be 
served. 

It is not merely positively, but negatively, that 
great aggregations of wealth, whether individual or 
corporate, tend to corrupt government and take it 
out of the control of the masses of the people, 
"l^othing is more timorous than a million dol 
lars — except two million dollars." Great wealth 
always supports the party in power, no matter how 
corrupt it may be. It never exerts itself for reform, 
for it instinctively fears change. It never struggles 
against misgovernment. When threatened by the 
holders of political power it does not agitate, nor 
appeal to the people ; it buys them off. It is in 
this way, no less than by its direct interference, that 
aggregated wealth corrupts government, and helps 
to make politics a trade. Our organized lobbies, 
both Legislative and Congressional, rely as much 
upon the fears as upon the hopes of moneyed inter- 
ests. When "business" is dull, their resource is to 
get up a bill which some moneyed interest will pay 
them to beat. So, too, these large moneyed inter- 
ests will subscribe to political funds, on the princi- 
ple of keeping oa the right side of those in power, 



28 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

Just as the railroad companies deadhead President 
Arthur when lie goes to Florida to fish. 

The more corrupt a government the easier wealth 
can use it. Where legislation is to be bought, the 
rich make the laws ; where justice is to be purchased, 
the rich have the ear of the courts. And if, for 
this reason, great wealth does not absolutely prefer 
corrupt government to pure government, it becomes 
none the less a corrupting influence. A community 
composed of very rich and very poor falls an easy 
prey to whoever can seize power. The very poor 
have not spirit and intelligence enough to resist ; 
the very rich have too much at stake. 

The rise in the United States of monstrous for- 
tunes, the aggregation of enormous wealth in the 
hands of corporations, necessarily implies the loss 
by the people of governmental control. Democratic 
forms may be maintained, but there can be as much 
tyranny and misgovernment under democratic 
forms as any other — in fact, they lend themselves 
most readily to tyranny and misgovernment. Forms 
count for little. The Romans expelled their kings, 
and continued to abhor the very name of king. 
But under the name of Caesars and Imperators, that 
at first meant no more than our "Boss," they 
crouched before tyrants more absolute than kings. 
We have already, under the popular name of 
"bosses," developed political Csesars in munici- 
palities and states. If this development continues, 



POLITICAL DANGERS. 29 

in time there will come a national boss. "We are 
young ; but we are growing. The day may arriye 
when the "Boss of America" will be to the modern 
world what Caesar was to the Roman world. This, 
at least, is certain : Democratic government in more 
than name can only exist where wealth is distrib- 
uted with something like equality — where the great 
mass of citizens are personally free and independ- 
ent, neither fettered by their poverty nor made sub- 
ject by their wealth. There is, after all, some sense 
in a property qualification. The man who is de- 
pendent on a master for his living is not a free man. 
To give the suffrage to slaves is only to give votes 
to their owners. That universal suffrage may add 
to, instead of decreasing, the political power of 
wealth we see when mill-owners and mine-operators 
vote their hands. The freedom to earn, without 
fear or favor, a comfortable living, ought to go with 
the freedom to vote. Thus alone can a sound basis 
for republican institutions be secured. How can a 
man be said to have a country where he has no 
right to a square inch of soil ; where he has noth- 
ing but his hands, and, urged by starvation, must 
bid against his fellows for the privilege of using 
them ? When it comes to voting tramps, some 
principle has been carried to a ridiculous and dan- 
gerous extreme. I have known elections to be de- 
cided by the carting of paupers from the almshouse 



80 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

to the polls. But such decisions can scarcely be In 
the interest of good government. 

Beneath all political problems lies the social prob- 
lem of the distribution of wealth. This our people 
do not generally recognize, and they listen to quacks 
who propose to cure the symptoms without touch- 
ing the disease. "Let us elect good men to office," 
say the quacks. Yes ; let us catch little birds by 
sprinkling salt on their tails ! 

It behooves us to look facts in the face. The 
experiment of popular government in the United 
States is clearly a failure. Not that it is a failure 
everywhere and in everything. An experiment of 
this kind does not have to be fully worked out to be 
proved a failure. But speaking generally of the 
whole country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and 
from the Lakes to the Gulf, our government by the 
people has in large degree become, is in larger 
degree becoming, government by the strong and 
unscrupulous. 

The people, of course, continue to vote ; but the 
people are losing their power. Money and organi- 
zation tell more and more in elections. In some 
sections bribery has become chronic, and numbers 
of voters expect regularly to sell their votes. In 
some sections large employers regularly bulldoze 
their hands into voting as they wish. In municipal, 
State and Federal politics the power of the "ma- 
chine " is increasing. It many places it has become 



POLITICAL DANGERS. 31 

SO strong that the ordinary citizen has no more in- 
fluence in the government under which he lives 
than he would have in China. He is, in realit}'', 
not one of the governing classes, but one of the 
governed. He occasionally, in disgust, votes for 
"the other man," or "the other party" ; but, gen- 
erally, to find that he has only effected a change of 
masters, or secured the same masters under differ- 
ent names. And he is beginning to accept the situa- 
tion, and to leave politics to politicians, as some- 
thing with which an honest, self-respecting man 
cannot afford to meddle. 

We are steadily differentiating a governing class, 
or rather a class of Prsetorians, who make a busi- 
ness of gaining political power and then selling 
it. The type of the rising party leader is not the 
orator or statesman of an earlier day, but the shrewd 
manager, who knows how to handle the workers, 
how to combine pecuniary interests, how to obtain 
money and to spend it, how to gather to himself 
followers and to secure their allegiance. One party 
machine is becoming complementary to the other 
party machine, the politicians, like the railroad 
managers, having discovered that combination pays 
better than competition. So rings are made im- 
pregnable and great pecuniary interests secure their 
ends no matter how elections go. There are sove- 
reign States so completely in the hands of rings and 
corporations that it seems as if nothing short of a 



82 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

revolntiorijiry uprising of the people could dispossess 
them. Indeed, whether the General Government 
has not alr'\';.dy passed beyond ]K)pular con<-rol may 
be doubted. Certain it is that possession of the 
General (Jovernment has for some time past secured 
possession. And for one term, at least, the Presi- 
dential chair has been occupied by a man not elected 
to it. This, of course, was largely due to the crook- 
edness of the man who was elected, and to the lack 
of principle in his supporters. Nevertheless, it 
occurred. 

As for the great railroad managers, they may 
well say " The people be d — d I " When they want 
the power oi' the people they buy the pe(^})le's mas- 
ters. The nnip of the United States is cohired to 
show States and Territories. A map of real politi- 
cal powers would ignore State lines. Hero would 
be a big patch representing the domains of Vander- 
bilt ; there Jiny Gouhfs dominions would be bright- 
ly marked. In another place woidd be set off the 
empire of Stanford and Huntington; in another tlie 
newer empire of Henry Villard ; the States and 
parts of States that own the sway of the Pennsyl- 
vania Central would be distinguished from those 
ruled by the Bahimore aiul C)hio ; and so on. In 
our National Senate, sovereign members of the 
Union are supposed to be represented ; but what 
are more truly represented are railroad kings and 
great moneyed interests, though occasionally a mine 



POLITICAL DANGERS. 33 

jobber from Nevada or Colorado, not inimical to the 
ruling powers, is suffered to buy himself a seat for 
glory. And the Bench as well as the Senate is 
being filled with corporation henchmen. A rail- 
road king makes his attorney a judge of last resort, 
as the great lord used to make his chaplain a bishop. 

We do not get even cheap government. We 
might keep a royal family, house them in palaces like 
V^ersailles or Sans Souci, provide them with courts 
and guards, masters of robes and rangers of parks, 
let them give balls more costly than Mrs. Vander- 
bilt's, and build yachts finer than Jay Gould's, for 
much less than is wasted and stolen under our nom- 
inal government of the people. What a noble in- 
come would be that of a Duke of New York, a Mar- 
quis of Philadelphia, or a Count of San Francisco, 
who would administer the government of these mu- 
nicipalities for fifty per cent, of present waste and 
stealage ! Unless we got an aesthetic Chinook, 
where could we get an absolute ruler who would 
erect such a monument of extravagant vulgarity as 
the new Capitol of the State of New York ? While, 
as we saw in the Congress just adjourned, the 
benevolent gentlemen whose desire it is -to protect 
us against the pauper labor of Europe quarrel over 
their respective shares of the spoil with as little 
regard for the taxpayer as a pirate crew would have 
for the consignees of a captured vessel. 

The people are largely conscious of all this, and 

a 



34 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

there is among the masses much dissatisfaction. 
But there is a lack of that intelligent interest neces- 
sary to adapt political organization to changing con- 
ditions. The popular idea of reform seems to be 
merely a change of men or a change of parties, not 
a change of system. Political children, we attribute 
to bad men or wicked parties what really springs 
from deep general causes. Our two great political 
parties have really nothing more to propose than 
the keeping or the taking of the offices from the 
other party. On their outskirts are the Greenback- 
ers, who, with a more or less definite idea of what 
they want to do with the currency, represent vague 
social dissatisfaction ; civil service reformers, who 
hope to accomplish a political reform while keeping it 
out of politics ; and anti-monopolists, who propose 
to tie up locomotives with pack thread. Even the 
labor organizations seem to fear to go further in 
their platforms than some such propositions as eight- 
hour laws, bureaus of labor statistics, mechanics' 
liens, and prohibition of prison contracts. 

All this shows want of grasp and timidity of 
thought. It is not by accident that government 
grows corrupt and passes out of the hands of the 
people. If we would really make and continue this 
a government of the people, for the people and by 
the people, we must give to our politics earnest at- 
tention ; we must be prepared to review our opin- 
ions, to give up old ideas and to accept new ones. 



POLITICAL DANGERS. 35 

We must abandon prejudice, and make our reckon- 
ing with free minds. Tiie sailor, who, no matter 
how the wind might change, should persist in keep- 
ing his vessel under the same sail and on the same 
tack, would never reach his haven. 



CHAPTER HI. 

COMING ESrCEEASE OF SOCIAL PKESSUEE. 

The trees, as I write, have not yet begun to leaf, 
nor even the blossoms to appear ; yet, passing down 
the lower part of Broadway these early days of 
spring, one breasts a steady current of uncouthly- 
dressed men and women, carrying bundles and 
boxes and all manner of baggage. As the season 
advances, the human current will increase ; even 
in winter it will not wholly cease its flow. It 
is the great gulf-stream of humanity which sets 
from Europe upon America — the greatest migration 
of peoples since the world began. Other minor 
branches has the stream. Into Boston and Phila- 
delphia, into Portland, Quebec and Montreal, into 
New Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco and Vic- 
toria, come ofishoots of the same current ; and as it 
flows it draws increasing volume from wider sources. 
Emigration to America has, since 1848, reduced 
the population of Ireland by more flian a third ; 
but as Irish ability to feed the stream declines, Eng- 
lish emigration increases ; the German outpour 
becomes so vast as to assume the first proportions, 
and the millions of Italy, pressed by want as severe 
as that of Ireland, begin to turn to the emigrant 



COMING INCEEASE OF SOCIAL PEESSUKE. 37 

ship as did the Irish. In Castle Garden one may 
see the garb and hear the speech of all European 
peoples. From the fjords of Norway, from the 
plains of Russia and Hungary, from the mountains 
of Wallachia, and from Mediterranean shores and 
islands, once the center of classic civilization, the 
great current is fed. Every year increases the fa- 
cility of its flow. Year by year improvements in 
steam navigation are practically reducing the dis- 
tance between the two continents ; year by year 
European railroads are making it easier for interior 
populations to reach the seaboard, and the telegraph, 
the newspaper, the schoolmaster and the cheap 
post, are lessening those objections of ignorance and 
sentiment to removal that are so strong with people 
long rooted in one place. Yet, in spite of this 
great exodus, the population of Europe, as a whole, 
is steadily increasing. 

And across the continent, from east to west, from 
the older to the newer States, an even greater mi- 
gration is going on. Our people emigrate more 
readily than those of Europe, and increasing as 
European immigration is, it is yet becoming a less 
and less important factor of our growth, as compared 
with the natural increase of our population. At 
Chicago and St. Paul, Omaha and Kansas City, the 
volume of the westward moving current has in- 
creased, not diminished. From what, so short a 
time ago, was the new West of unbroken prairie and 



38 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

native forest, goes on, as children grow up, a coa 
stant migration to a newer West. 

This westward expansion of population has gone 
on steadily since the first settlement of the Eastern 
shore. It has been the great distinguishing feature 
in the conditions of our people. Without its possi- 
bility we would have been in nothing what we are. 
Our higher standard of wages and of comfort and 
of average intelligence, our superior self-reliance, 
energy, inventiveness, adaptability and assimilative 
power, spring as directly from this possibility of 
expansion as does our unprecedented growth. All 
that we are proud of in national life and national 
character comes primarily from our background of 
unused land. We are but transplanted Europeans, 
and, for that matter, mostly of the "inferior classes." 
It is not usually those whose position is comfortable 
and whose prospects are bright who emigrate ; it is 
those who are pinched and dissatisfied, those to 
whom no prospect seems open. There are heralds' 
colleges in Europe that drive a good business in 
providing a certain class of Americans with pedi- 
grees and coats-of-arms ; but it is probably well for 
this sort of self-esteem that the majority of us can- 
not truly trace our ancestry very far. We had 
some Pilgrim Fathers, it is true ; likewise some 
Quaker fathers, and other sorts of fathers ; yet the 
majority even of the early settlers did not come to 
America for "freedom to worship God," but be- 



COMING ESrCKEASE OF SOCIAL PRESSURE. 39 

cause they were poor, dissatisfied, unsuccessful, or 
recklessly adventurous — many because they were 
evicted, many to escape imprisonment, many be- 
cause they were kidnapped, many as self-sold bonds- 
men, as indentured apprentices, or mercenary sol- 
diers. It is the virtue of new soil, the freedom of 
opportunity given by the possibility of expansion, 
that has here transmuted into wholesome human 
growth material that, had it remained in Europe, 
might have been degraded and dangerous, just as 
in Australia the same conditions have made re- 
spected and self-respecting citizens out of the de- 
scendants of convicts, and even out of convicts them- 
selves. 

It may be doubted if the relation of the opening 
of the New World to the development of modern 
civilization is yet fully recognized. In many re- 
spects the discovery of Columbus has proved the 
most important event in the history of the European 
world since the birth of Christ. How important 
America has been to Europe as furnishing an outlet 
for the restless, the dissatisfied, the oppressed and 
the down-trodden ; how influences emanating from 
the freer opportunities and freer life of America 
have reacted upon European thought and life — we 
can only begin to realize when we try to imagine 
what would have been the present condition of 
Europe had Columbus found only a watery waste 
between Europe and Asia, or even had he found 



40 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

here a continent populated as India or China, or 
Mexico, were populated. 

And, correlatively, one of the most momentous 
events that could happen to the modern world 
would be the ending of this possibility of westward 
expansion. That it must some time end is evident 
when we remember that the earth is round. 

Practically, this event is near at hand. Its shadow 
is even now stealing over us. Not that there is 
any danger of this continent being really overpopu- 
lated. Not that there will not be for a long time 
to come, even at our present rate of growth, plenty 
of unused land or of land only partially used. But 
to feel the results of what is called pressure of pop- 
ulation, to realize here pressure of the same kind 
that forces European emigration upon our shores, 
we shall not have to wait for that. Europe to day 
is not overpopulated. In Ireland, whence we have 
received such an immense immigration, not one- 
sixth of the soil is under cultivation, and grass 
grows and beasts feed where once were populous 
villages. In Scotland there is the solitude of the 
deer forest and the grouse moor where a century 
ago were homes of men. One may ride on the 
railways through the richest agricultural districts of 
England and see scarcely as many houses as in the 
valley of the Platte, where the buffalo herded a few 
years back. 

Twelve months ago, when the hedges were 



COMING INCEEASE OF SOCIAL PKESSUEE. 41 

blooming, I passed along a lovely English road 
near b j the cottage of that ' ' Shepherd of Salisbury 
Plain" of whom I read, when a boy, in a tract which 
is a good sample of the husks frequently given to 
children as religious food, and which is still, 1 pre- 
sume, distributed by the American, as it is by the 
English, Tract Society. On one side of the road 
was a wide expanse of rich land, in which no plow- 
share had that season been struck, because its 
owner demanded a higher rent than the farmers 
would give. On the other, stretched, for many a 
broad acre, a lordly park, its velvety verdure un- 
trodden save by a few light-footed deer. And, as 
we passed along, my companion, a native of those 
parts, bitterly complained that, since this lord of 
the manor had inclosed the little village green and 
set out his fences to take in the grass of the road- 
side, the cottagers could not keep even a goose, 
and the children of the village had no place to 
play ! Place there was in plenty, but, so far as the 
children were concerned, it might as well be in 
Africa or in the moon. And so in our Far West, 1 
have seen emigrants toiling painfully for long dis- 
tances through vacant land without finding a spot 
on which they dared settle. In a country where 
the springs and streams are all inclosed by walls 
he cannot scale, the wayfarer, but for charity, 
might perish of thirst, as in a desert. There is 
\jlenty of vacant land on Manhattan Island But 



42 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

on Manhattan Island human beings are packed 
closer than anywhere else in the world. There is 
plenty of fresh air all around — one man owns forty 
acres of it, a whiff of which he never breathes, since 
his home is on his yacht in Em'opean waters ; but, 
for all that, thousands of children die in New York 
every summer for want of it, and thousands more 
would die did not charitable people subscribe to 
fresh-air funds. The social pressure which forces 
on our shores this swelling tide of immigration 
arises not from the fact that the land of Europe is 
all in use, but that it is all appropriated. That will 
soon be our case as well. Our land will not all be 
used ; but it will all be " fenced in." 

We still talk of our vast public domain, and 
figures showing millions and millions of acres of 
unappropriated public land yet swell grandly in the 
reports of our Land Office. But already it is so 
difficult to find public land fit for settlement, that 
the great majority of those wishing to settle find it 
cheaper to buy, and rents in California and the 
New Northwest run from a quarter to even one half 
the crop. It must be remembered that the area 
which yet figures in the returns of our public do- 
main includes all the great mountain chains, all the 
vast deserts and dry plains fit only for grazing, or 
not even for that ; it must be remembered that of 
what is really fertile, millions and millions of acres 
are covered by railroad grants as yet unpatented. 



COMING INCREASE OF SOCIAL PRESSURE. 43 

01" what amounts to the same tiling to the settler, 
are shadowed by them ; that much is held bj ap- 
propriation of the water^ without which it is useless; 
and thttt mr.ch more is held under claims of various 
kinds, wLich, whether legal or illegal, are sufficient 
to keep the settler off unless he will consent to pay 
a price, or to mortgage his labor for years. 

ISTevertheless, land with us i& still comparatively 
cheap. But this cannot long coiitinue. The stream 
of immigration that come& swelling in, added to our 
steadily augmenting natural increase, will soon 
now so occupy the available lands as to raise the 
price of the poorest land won-^ settling on to a point 
We have never known. ISTearly twenty years ago 
Mr. "Wade, of Ohio, in a speech in the United States 
Senate, predicted that by the close of the century 
every acre of good agricultural land in the Union 
would be worth at least $50. That his prediction 
will be even more than verified we may already see. 
By the close of the century our population, at the 
normal rate of increase, will be over forty millions 
more than in 1880. That is to say, within the next 
seventeen years an additional population greater 
than that of the whole United States at the close of 
the civil war will be demanding room. Where will 
they find cheap land? There is no further West. 
Our advance has reached the Pacific, and beyond 
the Pacific is the East, with its teeming millions. 
From San Diego to Puget Sound there is no valley 



44: SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

of the coast-line that is not settled or pre-empted. 
To the very farthest corners of the Republic settlers 
are already going. The pressure is already so great 
that speculation and settlement are beginning to 
cross the northern border into Canada and the 
southern border into Mexico ; so great that land is 
being settled and is becoming valuable that a few- 
years ago would have been rejected — land where 
winter lasts for six months and the thermometer 
goes down into the forties below zero ; land where, 
owing to insufficient rainfall, a crop is always a risk ; 
land that cannot be cultivated at all without irriga- 
tion. The vast spaces of the western half of the 
continent do not contain anything like the propor- 
tion of arable land that does the eastern. The 
"great American desert" yet exists, though not 
now marked upon our maps. There is not to-day 
remaining in the United States any considerable 
body of good land unsettled and unclaimed, upon 
which settlers can go with the prospect of finding a 
homestead on Government terms. Already the tide 
of settlement presses angrily upon the Indian reser- 
vations, and but for the power of the general govern- 
ment would sweep over them. Alread}^, although 
her population is as yet but a fraction more than six 
to the square mile, the last acre of the vast public 
domain of Texas has passed into private hands, the 
rush to purchase during the past year having been 



COMING INCREASE OF SOCIAL PEESSUEE. 45 

such that many thousands of acres more than the 
State had were sold. 

We may see what is coming by the avidity with 
which capitalists, and especially foreign capitalists, 
who realize what is the value of land where none 
is left over which population may freely spread, are 
purchasing land in the United States. This move- 
ment has been going on quietly for some years, until 
now there is scarcely a rich English peer or wealthy 
English banker who does not, either individually or 
as the member of some syndicate, own a great tract 
of our new land, and the purchase of large bodies 
for foreign account is going on every day. It is 
with these absentee landlords that our coming 
millions must make terms. 

Nor must it be forgotten that, while our popula- 
tion is increasing, and our "wild lands" are being 
appropriated, the productive capacity of our soil is 
being steadily reduced, which, practically, amounts 
to the same thing as reducing its quantity. Speak- 
ing generally, the agriculture of the United States 
is an exhaustive agriculture. We do not return to 
the earth what we take from it ; each crop that is 
harvested leaves the soil the poorer. We are cut- 
ting down forests which we do not replant ; we are 
shipping abroad, in wheat and cotton and tobacco 
and meat, or flushing into the sea through the sew- 
ers of our great cities, the elements of fertility that 



46 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

Lave been embedded in the soil by the slow pro 
cesses of nature, acting for long ages. 

The day is near at hand when it will be no longer 
possible for our increasing population to freely ex- 
pand over new land ; when we shall need for our 
own millions the immense surplus of foodstuffs 
now exported; when we shall not only begin to 
feel that social pressure which comes when natural 
resources are all monopolized, but when increasing 
social pressure here will increase social pressure in 
Europe. How momentous is this fact we begin to 
realize when we cast about for such another outlet 
as the United States has furnished. We look in 
vain. The British possessions to the north of us 
embrace comparatively little arable land; the val- 
leys of the Saskatchewan and the E-ed River are be- 
ing already taken up, and land speculation is already 
raging there in fever. Mexico offers opportunities 
for American enterprise and American capital and 
American trade, but scarcely for American emigra- 
tion. There is some room for our settlers in that 
northern zone that has been kept desolate by fierce 
Indians; but it is very little. The table-land of 
Mexico and those portions of Central and South 
America suited to our people are already well filled 
by a population whom we cannot displace unless, 
as the Saxons displaced the ancient Britons, by a 
war of extermination. Anglo-Saxon capital and 
enterprise and influence will doubtless dominate 



COMING INCREASE OF SOCIAL PRESSURE. 47 

those regions, and many of our people will go 
there ; but it will be as Englishmen go to India or 
British Guiana. Where land is already granted 
and where peon labor can be had for a song, no 
such emigration can take place as that which has 
been pushing its way westward over the United 
States. So of Africa. Our race has made a per- 
manent lodgment on the southern extremity of that 
vast continent, but its northern advance is met by 
tropical heats and the presence of races of strong 
vitality. On the north, the Latin branches of the 
European family seem to have again become accli- 
mated, and will probably in time revive the ancient 
populousness and importance of Mediterranean Af- 
rica ; but it will scarcely furnish an outlet for more 
than them. As for Equatorial Africa, though we 
may explore, and civilize and develop, we cannot 
colonize it in the face of the climate and of races 
that increase rather than disappear in presence of 
the white man. The arable land of Australia would 
not merely be soon well populated by anything like 
the emigration that Europe is pouring on America, 
but there the forestalling of land goes on as rapidly as 
here. Thus we come again to that greatest of the con- 
tinents, from which our race once started on its west- 
ward way, Asia — mother of peoples and religions 
— which yet contains the greater part of the human 
race — millions who live and die in all but utter un- 
consciousness of our modern world. In the awak- 



*» SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

ening of those peoples by the impact of Western 
civilization lies one of the greatest problems ot the 
future. 

But jt is not mj purpose to enter into such specu- 
lations, What I want to point out is that we are 
very soon to lose one of the most important condi- 
tions under which our civilization has been develop- 
ing — that possibility of expansion over virgin soil 
that has given scope and freedom to American life, 
and relieved social pressure in the most progress- 
ive European nations. Tendencies, harmless under 
this condition, may become most dangerous when it 
is changed. Gunpowder does not explode until it 
is confined. You may rest your hand on the slowly 
ascending jaw of a hydraulic press. It will only 
gently raise it. But wait a moment till it meets 
resistance ! 



CHAPTER TV. 

TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 

So much freer, so much higher, so much fullei 
and wider is the life of our time, that, looking back, 
we cannot help feeling something like pitj, if not 
contempt, for preceding generations. 

Comforts, conveniences, luxuries, that a little 
while ago wealth could not purchase, are now mat- 
ters of ordinary use. We travel in an hour, easily 
and comfortably, wliat to our fathers was a hard 
day's journey ; we send in minutes messages that, 
in their time, would have taken weeks. We are 
better acquainted with remote countries than thej^ 
with regions little distant; we know as common 
things what to them were fast-locked secrets of 
nature ; our world is larger, our horizon is wider ; 
in the years of our lives we may see more, do more, 
learn more. 

Consider the diffusion of knowledge, the quick- 
ened transmission of intelligence. Compare the 
school-books used by our children with the school- 
books used by our fathers ; see how cheap printing 
has brought within the reach of the masses the very 
treasures of literature; how enormously it has 
widened the audience of the novelist, the historlaiij 

49 



60 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

the essayist and tlie poet ; see how superior are even 
the trashy novels and story-papers in which shop- 
girls delight, to the rude ballads and "last dying 
speeches and confessions, " which were their proto- 
types. Look at the daily newspapers, read even by 
the poorest, and giving to them glimpses of the 
doings of all classes of society, news from all parts 
of the world. Consider the illustrated journals that 
every week bring to the million pictures of life 
in all phases and in all countries — bird's-eye views 
of cities, of grand and beautiful landscapes; the 
features of noted men and women ; the sittings 
of parliaments, and congresses, and conventions; 
the splendor of courts, and the wild life of savages ; 
triumphs of art ; glories of architecture ; processes 
of industry ; achievements of inventive skill. Such 
a panorama as thus, week after week, passes before 
the eyes of common men and women, the richest 
and most powerful could not a generation ago have 
commanded. 

These things, and the many other things that the 
mention of these will suggest, are necessarily exert- 
ing a powerful influence upon thought and feeling. 
Superstitions are dying out, prejudices are giving 
way, manners and customs are becoming assimi- 
lated, sympathies are widening, new aspirations are 
quickening the masses. 

"We come into the world with minds ready to re- 
ceive any impression. To the eyes of infancy all is 



TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 51 

new, and one tiling is no more wonderful tlian 
another. In whatever lies beyond common expe- 
rience we assume the beliefs of those about us, and 
it is only the strongest intellects that can in a little 
raise themselves above the accepted opinions of 
their times. In a community where that opinion 
prevailed, the vast majority of us would as unhesita- 
tingly believe that the earth is a plain, supported 
by a gigantic elephant, as we now believe it a 
sphere circling round the sun. No theory is too 
false, no fable too absurd^ no superstition too de- 
grading for acceptance when it has become imbedde(^ 
in common behef. Men will submit themselves 
to tortures and to death, mothers will immolate 
their children, at the bidding of beliefs they thus 
accept. What more unnatural than polygamy? 
Yet see how long and how widely polygamy has 
existed ! 

In this tendency to accept what we find, to believe 
what we are told, is at once good and evil. It is 
this which makes social advance possible ; it is this 
which makes it so slow and painful. Each genera- 
tion thus obtains without effort the hard-won 
knowledge bequeathed to it; it is thus, also, en- 
slaved by errors and perversions which it in the 
same way receives. 

It is thus that tyranny is maintained and super- 
stition perpetuated. Polygamy is unnatural. Ob- 
vious facts of universal experience prove this. The 



62 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

uniform proportion in wliicli the sexes are brought 
into the world ; the exclusiveness of the feeling with 
which in healthy conditions they attract each other ; 
the necessities imposed by the slow growth and de- 
velopment of children, point to the union of one 
man with one woman as the intent of ISTature. Yet, 
although it is repugnant to the most obvious facts 
and to the strongest instincts, polygamy seems a 
perfectly natural thing to those educated in a society 
where it has become an accepted institution, and it 
is only by long effort and much struggling that this 
idea can be eradicated. So with slavery. Even to 
such minds as those of Plato and Aristotle, to own 
a man seemed as natural as to own a horse. Even 
in this nineteenth century and in this "land of lib- 
erty, " how long has it been since those who denied 
the right of property in human flesh and blood were 
denounced as "communists," as "infidels," as 
"incendiaries," bent on uprooting social order and 
destroying all property rights. So with monarchy, 
so with aristocracy, so with many other things as 
unnatural that are still unquestioningly accepted. 
Can anything be more unnatural — that is to say, 
more repugnant to right reason and to the facts and 
laws of nature — than that those who work least 
should get most of the things that work produces? 
"He that will not work, neither shall he eat." 
That is not merely the word of the Apostle ; it is 
the obvious law of Nature. Yet all over the world, 



TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 63 

hard and poor is the fare of the toiling masses ; 
while those who aid production neither with hand 
nor head live luxuriously and fare sumptuously 
This we have been used to, and it has therefore 
seemed to us natural, just as polygamy, slavery, 
aristocracy and monarchy seem natural to those 
accustomed to them. 

But mental habits which made this state of things 
seem natural are breaking up ; superstitions which 
prevented its being questioned are melting away. 
The revelations of physical science, the increased 
knowledge of other times and other peoples, the 
extension of education, emigration, travel, the rise 
of the critical spirit and the changes in old methods 
everywhere going on, are destroying beliefs which 
made the masses of men content with the position 
of hewers of wood and drawers of water, are soft- 
ening manners and widening sympathies, are ex- 
tending the idea of human equality and brother- 
hood. 

All over the world the masses of men are becom- 
ing more and more dissatisfied with conditions 
under which their fathers would have been con- 
tented. It is in vain that they are told that their 
situation has been much improved ; it is in vain 
that it is pointed out to them that comforts, amuse- 
ments, opportunities, are within their reach that 
their fathers would not have dreamed of. The 
having got so much, only leads them to ask why 



54 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

tliey should not have more. Desire groM'^s bj what 
it feeds on. Man is not like the ox. He has no 
fixed standard of satisfaction. To arouse his ambi- 
tion, to educate him to new wants, is as certain to 
make him discontented with his lot as to make that 
lot harder. We resign ourselves to what we think 
cannot be bettered ; but when we realize that im- 
provement is possible, then we become restive. 
This is the explanation of the paradox that De 
Tocqneville thought astonishing : that the masses 
find their position the more intolerable the more it 
is improved. The slave codes were wise that pre- 
scribed pains. and penalties for teaching bondsmen 
to read, and they reasoned well who opposed popular 
education on the ground that it would brjig revolu- 
tion. 

But there is in the conditions of the civilized 
world to-daj something more portentous than a 
growing restiveness under evils long endured. 
Everything tends to awake the sense of natural 
equality, to arouse the aspirations and ambitions of 
the masses, to excite a keener and keener perception 
of the gross injustice of existing inequalities of privi- 
lege and wealth. Yet, at the same time, every- 
thing tends to the rapid and monstrous increase of 
these inequalities. Never since great estates were 
eating out the heart of Rome has the world seen 
such enormous fortunes as are now arising. And 
never more utter proletarians. In the paper which 



TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 55 

contained a many-column account of the Yanderbilt 
ball, with its gorgeous dresses and its wealth of 
diamonds, with its profusion of roses, costing $2 
each, and its precious wines flowing like water, I 
also read a brief item telling how, at a station-house 
near by, thirty-nine persons — eighteen of them 
women — had sought shelter, and how they were 
all marched into court next morning and sent for 
six months to prison. "The women," said the 
item, "shrieked and sobbed bitterly as they were 
carried to prison." Christ was born of a woman. 
And to Mary Magdalen he turned in tender bless- 
ing. But such vermin have some of these human 
creatures, made in God's image, become, that we 
must shovel them off to prison without being too 
particular. 

The railroad is a new thing. It has scarcely 
begun its work. Yet it has already differentiated 
the man who counts his income by millions every 
month, and the thousands of men glad to work for 
him at from 90 cents to $1.50 a day. Who shall 
set bounds, under present tendencies, to the great 
fortunes of the next generation? Or to the correla- 
tives of these great fortunes, the tramps ? 

The tendency of all the inventions and improve- 
ments so wonderfully augmenting pi-oductive 
power is to concentrate enormous wealth in the 
hands of a few, to make the condition of the many 
more hopeless ; to force into the position of machines 



56 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

for the production of wealth they are not to enjoy, 
men whose aspirations are being aroused. Without a 
single exception that I can think of, the effect of all 
modern industrial improvements is to production 
upon a large scale, to the minute division of labor, 
to the giving to the possession of large capital an 
overpowering advantage. Even such inventions as 
the telephone and the type-writer tend to the con- 
centration of wealth, by adding to the ease with 
which large businesses can be managed, and lessen- 
ing limitations that after a certain point made fur- 
ther extension more difficult. 

The tendency of the machine is in every thing not 
merely to place it out of the power of the workman 
to become his own^ employer, but to reduce him to 
the position of a mere attendant or feeder ; to dis- 
pense with judgment, skill and brains, save in a 
few overseers ; to reduce all others to the monoto- 
nous work of automatons, to which there is no future 
save the same unvarying round. 

Under the old system of handicraft, the workman 
may have toiled hard and long, but in his work he 
had companionship, variety, the pleasure that comes 
of the exercise of creative skill, the sense of seeing 
things growing under his hand to finished form. 
He worked in his own home or side by side with 
his employer. Labor was lightened by emulation, 
by gossip, by laughter, by discussion. As appren- 
tice, he looked forward to becoming a journeyman ; 



TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 57 

as a journeyman, he looked forward to becoming a 
master and taking an apprentice of his own. Witii 
a few tools and a little raw material he was inde- 
pendent. He dealt directly with those who used 
the finished articles he produced. If he could not 
find a market for money he could find a market in 
exchange. That terrible dread — the dread of hav- 
ing the opportunities of livelihood shut off" ; of find- 
ing himself utterly helpless to provide for his family, 
never cast its shadow over him. 

Consider the blacksmith of the industrial era now 
everywhere passing — or rather the "black and 
white smith," for the finished workman worked in 
steel as well. The smithy stood by roadside or 
street. Through its open doors were caught glimpses 
of nature ; all that was passing could be seen. Way- 
farers stopped to inquire, neighbors to tell or hear 
the news, children to see the hot iron glow and 
watch the red sparks fly. Kow the smith shoed a 
horse ; now he put on a wagon-tire ; now he forged 
and tempered a tool ; again he welded a broken 
andiron, or beat out with graceful art a crane for 
the deep chimney-place, or, when there was noth- 
ing else to do, he wrought iron into nails. 

Go now into one of those enormous establishments 
covering acres and acres, in which workmen b}^ the 
thousand are massed together, and, by the aid of 
steam and machinery, iron is converted to its uses at 
a fraction of the cost of the old system. You can- 



58 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

not enter without permission from the office, for 
over each door you will find the sign, " Positively 
no admittance." If you are permitted to go in, 
you must not talk to the workmen ; but that makes 
little difference, as amid the din and the clatter, 
and whirr of belts and wheels, you could not if 
you would. Here you find men doing over and 
over the selfsame thing — passing, all day long, bars 
of iron through great rollers ; presenting plates to 
steel jaws, turning, amid clangor in which you can 
scarcely "hear yourself think," bits of iron over 
and back again, sixty times a minute, for hour after 
hour, for day after day, for year after year. In the 
whole great establishment there will be not a man, 
save here and there one who got his training under the 
simpler system now passing away, who can do more 
than some minute part of what goes to the making 
of a salable article. The lad learns in a little while 
how to attend his particular machine. Then his 
progress stops. He may become gray-headed with- 
out learning more. As his children grow, the only 
way he has of augmenting his income is by setting 
them to work. As for aspiring to become master of 
such an establishment, with its millions of capital in 
machinery and stock, he might as well aspire to bo 
King of England or Pope of Rome. He has no 
more control over the conditions that give him 
employment than has the passenger in a railroad- 
car over the motion of the train. Causes which he 



TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 59 

can neither prevent nor foresee may at any time stop 
his machine and throw him upon the world, an ut- 
terly unskilled laborer, unaccustomed even to swing 
a pick or handle a spade. When times are good, 
and his employer is coining money, he can only get 
an advance by a strike or a threatened strike. At 
the least symptoms of harder times his wages are 
scaled down, and he can only resist by a strike, 
which means, for a longer or shorter time, no 
wages. 

I have spoken of but one trade ; but the tendency 
is the same in all others. This is the form that in- 
dustrial organization is everywhere assuming, even 
in agriculture. Great corporations are now stock- 
ing immense ranges with cattle, and "bonanza 
farms " are cultivated by gangs of nomads destitute 
of anything that can be called home. In all occu- 
pations the workman is steadily becoming divorced 
from the tools and opportunities of labor ; every- 
where the inequalities of fortune are becoming more 
glaring. And this at a time when thought is being 
quickened ; when the old forces of conservatism are 
giving way ; when the idea of human equality is 
growing and spreading. 

When between those who work and want and 
those who live in idle luxury there is so great a 
gulf fixed that in popular imagination they seem to 
belong to distinct orders of beings ; when, in the 
name of religion, it is persistently mstilled into the 



60 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

masses that all things in this world are ordered by 
Divine Providence, which appoints to each his place ; 
when children are taught from the earliest infancy 
that it is, to use the words of the Episcopal cate- 
chism, their duty toward God and man to " honor 
and obey the civil authority," to "order themselves 
lowly and reverently toward their betters, and to do 
their duty in that state of life in which it shall please 
God to call them"; when these counsels of humil- 
ity, of contentment and of self-abasement are en- 
forced by the terrible threat of an eternity of 
torture, while on the other hand the poor are taught 
to believe that if they patiently bear their lot here 
God will after death translate them to a heaven 
where there is no private property and no pov- 
erty, the most glaring inequalities in condition may 
excite neither envy nor indignation. 

But the ideas that are stirring in the world to-day 
are different from these. 

Near nineteen hundred years ago, when another 
civilization was developing monstrous inequalities, 
when the masses everywhere were being ground 
into hopeless slavery, there arose in a Jewish village 
an unlearned carpenter, who, scorning the ortho- 
doxies and ritualisms of the time, preached to labor- 
ers and fishermen the gospel of the fatherhood of 
God, of the equality and brotherhood of men, who 
taught his disciples to pray for the coming of the 
kingdom of heaven on earth. The college professors 



TWO OPPOSING TENDENCIES. 61 

sneered at him, the orthodox preachers denounced 
him. He was reviled as a dreamer, as a disturber, 
as a " communist," and, finally, organized society 
took the alarm, and he was crucified between two 
thieves. But the word went forth, and, spread by 
fugitives and slaves, made its way against power 
and against persecution till it revolutionized the 
world, and out of the rotting old civilization brought 
the germ of the new. Then the privileged classes 
rallied again, carved the effigy of the man of the 
people in the courts and on the tombs of kings, in 
his name consecrated inequality, and wrested his 
gospel to the defense of social injustice. But again 
the same great ideas of a common fatherhood, of a 
common brotherhood, of a social state in which 
none shall be overworked and none shall want, 
begin to quicken in common thought. 

When a mighty wind meets a strong current, it 
does not portend a smooth sea. And whoever will 
think of the opposing tendencies beginning to de- 
velop will appreciate the gravity of the social prob- 
lems the civilized world must soon meet. He will 
also understand the meaning of Christ's words when 
he said : 

'•'•ThiTik not I am come to send peace on earth. 1 
come not to send peace, hut a sword^ 



CHAPTEE Y. 

THE MARCH OF CONCENTKATION. 

In 1790, at the time of the first census of the 
United States, the cities contained but 3.3 per cent 
of the whole population. In 1880 the cities con- 
tained 22.5 per cent of the population. This ten^ 
dency of population to concentrate is one of the 
marked features of our time. All over the civilized! 
world the great cities are growing even faster thai, 
the growth of population. The increase in the 
population of England and Scotland during th«j 
present century has been in the cities. In France^, 
where population is nearly stationary, the large 
cities are year by year becoming larger. In Ire 
land, where population is steadily declining, Publiif 
and Belfast are steadily growing. 

The same great agencies — steam and machiner;^ 
— that are thus massing population in cities are 
operating even more powerfully to concentrate in- 
dustry and trade. This is to be seen wherever the 
new forces have had play, and in every branch of 
industry, from such primary ones as agriculture, 
stock-raising, mining and fishing, up to those crea- 
ted by recent invention, such as railroading, tele- 
graphing, or the lighting by gas or electricity. 



THE MAECH OF CONCENTKATION. 63 

It has been stated on the authority of the United 
States Census Bureau that the average size of farms 
is decreasing in the United States. This statement 
is not only inconsistent with facts obvious all over 
the United States, and with the tendencies of agri- 
culture in other countries, such as Great Britain, 
but it is inconsistent with the returns furnished by 
the Census Bureau itself. According to the ' ' Com- 
pendium of the Tenth Census," the increase of the 
number of farms in the United States during the 
decade between 1870 and 1880 was about 50 per 
cent, and the returns in the eight classes of farms 
enumerated show a steady diminution in the smaller 
sized farms and a steady increase in the larger. In 
the class under three acres, the decrease during the 
decade was about 37 per cent ; between three and 
ten acres, about 21 per cent ; between ten and 
twenty acres, about 14 per cent ; between twenty 
and fifty acres, something less than 8 per cent 
With the class between 50 and 100 acres, the in- 
crease begins, amounting in this class to about 37 
per cent. In the next class, between 100 and 500 
acres, the increase is nearly 200 per cent. In the 
class between 500 and 1,000 acres, it is nearly 400 
per cent. In the class over 1,000 acres, the largest 
given, it amounts to almost 700 per cent. 

How, in the face of these figures, the Census 
Bureau can report a decline in the average size of 
farms in the United States from 153 acres in 1870 



64 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

to 134 acres in 1880 I cannot understand. Nor is 
it worth while here to inquire,* The incontestable 
fact is that, like everything else, the ownership of 
land is concentrating, and farming is assuming a 
larger scale. This is due to the improvements in 
agricultural machinery, which make farming a 
business requiring more capital, to the enhanced 
value of land, to the changes produced by rail- 
roads, and the advantage which special rates give 
the large over the small producer. That it is an 
accelerating tendency there is no question. The 
new era in farming is only beginning. And what- 
ever be its gains, it involves the reduction of the 
great body of American farmers to the ranks of 
tenants or laborers. There are no means of discov- 
ering the increase of tenant farming in the United 
States during the last decade, as no returns as to 
tenantry were made prior to the last census ; but 
that shows that there were in the United States in 
1880 no less than 1,024,601 tenant farmers, f If, in 
addition to this, we could get at the number of 
farmers nominally owning their own land, but who 
are in reality paying rent in the shape of interest 
on mortgages, the result would be astounding. 

How in all other branches of industry the same 
process is going on, it is scarcely necessary to 
speak. It is everywhere obvious that the indepen- 



* The Census r>ureau has since explained that the tables for 1870 are based 
on improved area, while those for 1880 refer to total area, thus making any 
comparison of the two impossible. 

t The total number of farmers and planters is given at 4,285,945. 



THE MAECH OF CONCENTRATION. 65 

dent meclianic is becoming an operative, the little 
storekeeper a salesman in a big store, the small 
merchant a clerk or bookkeeper, and that men, under 
the old system independent, are being massed in 
the employ of great firms and corporations. But 
the effect of this is scarcely realized. A large class 
of people, including many professed public teach- 
ers, are constantly talking as though energy, in- 
dustry and economy were alone necessary to busi- 
ness success — are constantly pointing to the fact 
that men who began with nothing are now rich, as 
proof that any one can begin with nothing and get 
rich. 

That most of our rich men did begin with noth- 
ing is true. But that the same success could be 
as easily won now is not true. Times of change 
always afford opportunities for the rise of indi- 
viduals, which disappear when social relations are 
again adjusted. We have not only been overrunning 
a new continent, but the introduction of steam and 
the application of machinery have brought about 
industrial changes such as the world never before 
saw. 

When William the Conqueror parceled out Eng- 
land among his followers, a feudal aristocracy was 
created out of an army of adventurers. But when 
society had hardened again, an hereditary nobility 
had formed into which no common man could hope 
to win his way, and the descendants of William's 



66 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

adventurers looked down upon men of their father's 
class as upon beings formed of inferior clay. So 
when a new country is rapidly settling, those who 
come while land is cheap and industry and trade 
are in process of organization have opportunities 
that those who start from the same plane when land 
has become valuable and society has formed cannot 
have. 

The rich men of the first generation in a new 
country are always men who started with nothing, 
but the rich men of subsequent generations are 
generally those who inherited their start. In the 
United States, when we hear of a wealthy man, we 
naturally ask, " How did he make his money?" for 
the presumption, over the greater part of the country, 
is that he acquired it himself. In England they do 
not ordinarily ask that question — there the pre- 
sumption is that he inherited it. But, though the 
soil of England was parceled out long ago, the great 
changes consequent upon the introduction of steam 
and machinery have there, as here, opened oppor- 
tunities to rise from the ranks of labor to great 
wealth. Those opportunities are now closed or 
closing. When a railroad train is slowly moving 
off, a single step may put one on it. But in a few 
minutes those who have not taken that step may 
run themselves out of breath in the hopeless en- 
deavor to overtake the train. It is absurd to think 
that it is easy to step aboard a train at full speed 



THE MAECH OF CONCENTRATION. 67 

because those who got on board at starting did so 
easily. So is it absurd to think that opportunities 
open when steam and machinery were beginning 
their concentrating work will remain open. 

An English friend, a wealthy retired Manchester 
manufacturer, once told me the story of his life. 
How he went to work at eight years of age helping 
make twine, when twine was made entirely by 
hand. How, when a young man, he walked to 
Manchester, and having got credit for a bale of flax, 
made it into twine and sold it. How, building up 
a little trade, he got others to work for him. How, 
when machinery began to be invented and steam 
was introduced, he took advantage of them, until 
he had a big factory and made a fortune, when he 
withdrew to spend the rest of his days at ease, leav- 
ing his business to his son. 

' ' Supposing you were a young man now, " said 
I, "could you walk into Manchester and do that 
again ?" 

"No," replied he; "no one could. I couldn't 
with fifty thousand pounds in place of my five shil- 
lings. " 

So in every branch of business in which the new 
agencies have begun to reach anything like develop- 
ment. Leland Stanford drove an ox-team to Califor-^ 
nia ; Henry Yillard came here from Germany a poor 
boy, became a newspaper reporter, and rode a mule 
from Kansas City to Denver when the plains were 



68 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

swarming with Indians — a thing no one with a bank 
account would do. Stanford and his associates got 
hold of the Central Pacific enterprise, with its gov- 
ernment endowments, and are now masters of 
something like twelve thousand miles of rail, mill- 
ions of acres of land, steamship lines, express com- 
panies, banks and newspapers, to say nothing of 
legislatures, congressmen, judges, etc. So Henry 
Yillard, by a series of fortunate accidents, which he 
had energy and tact to improve, got hold of the 
Oregon Steam Navigation combination, and of the 
Northern Pacific endowment, and has become the 
railroad king of the immense domain north of the 
Stanford dominions, having likewise his thousands 
of miles of road, millions of acres of land, his news- 
papers, political servitors, and literary brushers-ofif 
of flies, and being able to bring over a shipload of 
lords and barons to see him drive a golden spike. 

Now, it is not merely that such opportunities as 
these which have made the Stanfords and Yillards 
BO great, come only with the opening of new countries 
and the development of new industrial agents ; but 
that the rise of the Stanfords and Yillards makes 
impossible the rise of others such as they. Who- 
ever now starts a railroad within the domains of 
either must become subordinate and tributary to 
them. The great railroad king alone can fight the 
great railroad king, and control of the railroad sys- 
tem not only gives the railroad kings control of 



THE MAECH OF CONOENTEATION. 69 

branch, roads, of express companies, stage lines, 
steamshi]3 lines, etc., not only enables tliem to make 
or unmake the smaller towns, but it enables them 
to "size the pile" of any one who develops a busi- 
ness requiring transportation, and to transfer to 
their own pockets any surplus beyond what, after 
careful consideration, they think he ought to make. 
The rise of these great powers is like the growth of 
a great tree, which draws the moisture from the sur- 
rounding soil, and stunts all other vegetation by its 
shade. 

So, too, does concentration operate in all busi- 
nesses. The big mill crushes out the little mill. 
The big store undersells the little store till it gets 
rid of its competition. On the top of the building 
of the American News Company, on Chambers 
street, New York, stands a newsboy carved in mar- 
ble. It was in this way that the managing man of 
that great combination began. But what was at 
first the union of a few sellers of newspapers for 
mutual convenience has become such a powerful 
concern, that combination after combination, backed 
with capital and managed with skill, have gone 
down in the attempt to break or share its monopoly. 
The newsboy may look upon the statue that crowns 
the building as the young Englishman who goes to 
India to take a clerical position may look upon the 
statue of Lord Clive. It is a lesson and an incen- 
tive, to be sure ; but just as Olive's victories, by es- 



70 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

tablishing ihe English dominion in India, made 
such a career as his impossible again, so does the 
success of such a concern as the American ISlews 
Company make it impossible for men of small capi- 
tal to establish another such business. 

So may the printer look upon the Tribune build- 
ing, or the newspaper writer upon that of the Herald. 
A Greeley or a Bennett could no longer hope to es- 
tablish a first-class paper in New York, or to get 
control of one already established, unless he got a 
Jay Gould to back him. Even in our newest cities 
the day has gone by when a few printers and a few 
writers could combine and start a daily paper. To 
say nothing of the close corporation of the Asso- 
ciated Press, the newspaper has become an immense 
machine, requiring large capital, and for the most 
part it is written by literary operatives, who must 
write to suit the capitalist that controls it. 

In the last generation a full-rigged Indiaman 
would be considered a very large vessel if she reg- 
istered 500 tons. Now we are building coasting 
schooners of 1,000 tons. It is not long since our 
first-class ocean steamers were of 1,200 or 1,500 tons. 
Now the crack steamers of the transatlantic route 
are rising to 10,000 tons. Not merely are there 
relatively fewer captains, but the chances of modern 
captains are not as good. The captain of a great 
transatlantic steamer recently told me that he got 
no more pay now than when as a young man he 



THE MAKCH OF CONCENTKATION. 71 

commanded a small sailing-ship. I^or is there now 
any "primage," any " ventm'e," any chance of be- 
coming owner as well as captain of one of these 
great steamers. 

Under any condition of things short of a rigid 
system of hereditary caste, there will, of course, 
always be men who, by force of great abilities and 
happy accidents, win their way from poverty to 
wealth, and from low to high position ; but the strong 
tendencies of the time are to make this more and 
more difl&cult. Jay Grould is probably an abler 
man than the present Yanderbilt. Had they started 
even, Vanderbilt might now have been peddling 
mouse-traps or working for a paltry salary as some 
one's clerk, while Gould counted his scores of mill- 
ions. But with all his money-making ability Gould 
cannot overcome the start given by the enormous 
acquisitions of the first Yanderbilt. And when the 
sons of the present great money-makers take their 
places, the chances of rivalry on the part of any- 
body else's sons will be much less. 

All the tendencies of the present are not merely 
to the concentration, but to the perpetuation, of 
great fortunes. There are no crusades ; the habits 
of the very rich are not to that mad extravagance 
that could dissipate such fortunes ; high play has 
gone out of fashion, and the gambling of the Stock 
Exchange is more dangerous to short than to long 
purses. Stocks, bonds, mortgages, safe deposit and 



72 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

trust companies aid the retention of large wealtli, 
and all modern agencies enlarge the sphere of its 
successful employment. 

On the other hand, the mere laborer is becoming 
more helpless, and small capitals find it more and 
more difficult to compete with larger capitals. The 
greater railroad companies are swallowing up the 
lesser railroad companies ; one great telegraph com- 
pany already controls the telegraph wires of the 
continent, and, to save the cost of buying up more 
patents, pays inventors not to invent. As in Eng- 
land, nearly all the public-houses have passed into 
the hands of the great brewers, so, here, large firms 
start young men, taking chattel mortgages on their 
stock. As in Great Britain, the supplying of rail- 
way passengers with eatables and drinkables has 
passed into the hands of a single great company, 
and in Paris one large restaurateur, with numerous 
branches, is taking the trade of the smaller ones, so 
here the boys who sell papers and peanuts on the 
trains are employes of companies, and bundles are 
carried and errands run by corporations. 

I am not denying that this tendency is largely to 
subserve public convenience. I am merely point- 
ing out that it exists. A great change is going on 
all over the civilized world similar to that infeuda- 
tion which, in Europe, during the rise of the feudal 
system, converted free proprietors into vassals, and 
brought all society into subordination to a hierarchy 



THE MARCH OF CONCENTRATION. 73 

of wealth and privilege. Whether the new aristoc- 
racj is hereditary or not makes little difference. 
Chance alone may determine who will get the few 
prizes of a lottery. But it is not the less certain 
that the vast majority of all who take part in it 
must draw blanks. The forces of the new era have 
not yet had time to make status hereditary, but 
we may clearly see that when the industrial organi- 
zation compels a thousand workmen to take service 
under one master, the proportion of masters to men 
will be but as one to a thousand, though the one 
may come from the ranks of the thousand. "Mas- 
ter ! " We don't like the word. It is not American ! 
But what is the use of objecting to the word when 
we have the thing. The man who gives me em- 
ployment, which I must have or suffer, that man is 
my master, let me call him what I will. 



CHAPTER YI. 

THE WEONG IN EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 

The comfortable theory that it is in the nature of 
things that some should be poor and some should 
be rich, and that the gross and constantly increasing 
inequalities in the distribution of wealth imply no 
fault in our institutions, pervades our literature, and 
is taught in the press, in the church, in school and 
in college. 

This is a free country, we are told — every man 
has a vote and every man has a chance. The la- 
borer's son may become President; poor boys of 
to-day will be millionaires thirty or forty years from 
now, and the millionaire's grandchildren will prob- 
ably be poor. What more can be asked ? If a man 
has energy, industry, prudence and foresight, he 
may win his way to great wealth. If he has not 
the ability to do this he must not complain of those 
who have. If some enjoy much and do little, it is 
because they, or their parents, possessed superior 
qualities which enabled them to " acquire property " 
or "make money." If others must work hard and 
get little, it is because they have not yet got their 
start, because they are ignorant, shiftless, unwilling 
to practice that economy necessary for the first ao« 

74 



THE WEONG IN EXISTINa SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 76 

cumulation of capital ; or because their fathers were 
wanting in these respects. The inequalities in con- 
dition result from the inequalities of human nature, 
from the difference in the powers and capacities of 
different men. If one has to toil ten or twelve 
hours a day for a few hundred dollars a year, while 
another, doing little or no hard work, gets an in- 
come of many thousands, it is because all that the 
former contributes to the augmentation of the com- 
mon stock of wealtb is little more than the mere 
force of his muscles. He can expect little more 
than the animal, because he brings into play little 
more than animal powers. He is but a private in 
the ranks of the great army of industry, who has 
but to stand still or march, as he is bid. The other 
is the organizer, the general, who guides and wields 
the whole great machine, who must think, plan 
and provide ; and his larger income is only com- 
mensurate with the far higher and rarer powers 
which he exercises, and the far greater importance 
of the function he fulfills. Shall not education have 
its reward, and skill its payment? What incentive 
would there be to the toil needed to learn to do 
anything well were great prizes not to be gained 
by those who learn to excel ? It would not merely 
be gross injustice to refuse a Kaphael or a Rubens 
more than a house-painter, but it would prevent the 
development of great painters. To destroy inequal- 
ities in condition would be to destroy the incentive 



76 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

to progress. To quarrel with them is to quarrel 
with the laws of nature. We might as well rail 
against the length of the days or the phases of the 
moon ; complain that there are valleys and moun- 
tains ; zones of tropical heat and regions of eternal 
ice. And were we by violent measures to divide 
wealth equally, we should accomplish nothing but 
harm ; in a little while there would be inequalities 
as great as before. 

This, in substance, is the teaching which we con- 
stantly hear. It is accepted by some because it is 
flattering to their < vanity, in accordance with their 
interests or pleasing to their hope ; by others, be- 
cause it is dinned into their ears. Like all false 
theories that obtain wide acceptance, it contains 
much truth. But it is truth isolated from other 
truth or alloyed with falsehood. 

To try to pump out a ship with a hole in her 
hull would be hopeless ; but that is not to say 
that leaks may not stopped and ships pumped 
dry. It is undeniable that, under present conditions, 
inequalities in fortune would tend to reassert them- 
selves even if arbitrarily leveled for a moment; 
but that does not prove that the conditions from 
which this tendency to inequality springs may not 
be altered. Nor because there are differences in 
human qualities and powers does it follow that ex- 
isting inequalities of fortune are thus accounted for. 
I have seen very fast compositors and very slow 



THE WKONG IN EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. YT 

compositors, but the fastest I eyer saw could not 
set twice as much type as the slowest, and I doubt 
if in other trades the variations are greater. Be- 
tween normal men the difference of a sixth or sev- 
enth is a great difference in height — the tallest 
giant ever known was scarcely more than four times 
as tall as the smallest dwarf ever known, and I 
doubt if any good observer will say that the mental 
differences of men are greater than the physical 
differences. Yet we already have men hundreds of 
millions of times richer than other men. 

That he who produces should have, that he who 
saves should enjoy, is consistent with human reason 
and with the natural order. But existing inequali- 
ties of wealth cannot be justified on this ground. 
As a matter of fact, how many great fortunes can be 
truthfully said to have been fairly earned? How 
many of them represent wealth produced by their 
possessors or those from whom their present posses- 
sors derived them ? Did there not go to the forma- 
tion of all of them something more than superior 
industry and skill? Such qualities may give the 
first start, but when fortunes begin to roll up into 
millions there will always be found some element of 
monopoly, some appropriation of wealth produced 
by others. Often there is a total absence of superior 
industry, skill or self-denial, and merely better luck 
or greater unscrupulousness. 



78 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

An acquaintance of mine died in San Francisco 
recently, leaving $4,000,000, which will go to heirs to 
be looked up in England. I have known many men 
more industrious, more skillful, more temperate 
than he — men who did not or who will not leave a 
cent. This man did not get his wealth by his in- 
dustry, skill or temperance. He no more produced 
it than did those lucky relations in England who 
may now do nothing for the rest of their lives. He 
became rich by getting hold of a piece of land in 
the early days, which, as San Francisco grew, be- 
came very valuable. His wealth represented not 
what he had earned, but what the monopoly of this 
bit of the earth's surface enabled him to appropriate 
of the earnings of others. 

A man died in Pittsburgh, the other day, leaving 
$3,000,000. He may or may not have been par- 
ticularly industrious, skillful and economical, but it 
was not by virtue of these qualities that he got so 
rich. It was because he went to Washington and 
helped lobby through a bill which, by way of " pro- 
tecting American workmen against the pauper labor 
of Europe," gave him the advantage of a sixty per 
cent tariff. To the day of his death he was a stanch 
protectionist, and said free trade would ruin our 
' ' infant industries. " Evidently the $3, 000, 000 which 
he was enabled to lay by from his own little cherub 
of an "infant industry" did not represent what he 



THE WRONG IN EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 79 

had added to production. It was the advantage 
given him by the tariff that enabled him to scoop it 
up from other people's earnings. 

This element of monopoly, of appropriation and 
spoliation will, when we come to analyze them, be 
found to largely account for all great fortunes. 

There are two classes of men who are always 
talking as though great fortunes resulted from the 
power of increase belonging to capital — those who 
declare that present social adjustments are all right ; 
and those who denounce capital and insist that inter- 
est should be abolished. The typical rich man of 
the one set is he who, saving his earnings, devotes 
the surplus to aiding production, and becomes rich 
by the natural growth of his capital. The other set 
make calculations of the enormous sum a dollar put 
out at six per cent compound interest will amount to 
in a hundred years, and say we must abolish interest 
if we would prevent the growth of great fortunes. 

But I think it difficult to instance any great fortune 
really due to the legitimate growth of capital ob- 
tained by industry. 

The great fortune of the Rothschilds springs from 
the treasure secured by the Landgrave of Hesse- 
Cassel by selling his people to England to fight 
against our forefathers in their struggle for indepen- 
dence. It began in the blood-money received by 
this petty tyrant from greater tyrants as the price of 
the lives of his subjects. It has grown to its pres- 



80 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

ent enormous dimensions by the jobbing of loans 
raised by European kings for holding in subjection 
the people and waging destructive wars upon each 
other. It no more represents the earnings of in- 
dustry or of capital than do the sums now being 
wrung by England from the poverty-stricken fellahs 
of Egypt to pay for the enormous profits on loans 
to the Khedive, which he wasted on palaces, yachts, 
harems, ballet-dancers, and cart-loads of diamonds, 
such as he gave to the Shermans. 

The great fortune of the Duke of Westminster, 
the richest of the rich men of England, is purely the 
result of appropriation. It no more springs from 
the earnings of the present Duke of Westminster or 
any of his ancestors than did the great fortunes 
bestowed by Russian monarchs on their favorites 
when they gave them thousands of the Russian 
people as their serfs. An English king, long since 
dead, gave to an ancestor of the present Duke of 
Westminster a piece of land over which the city of 
London has now extended — that is to say, he gave 
him the privilege, still recognized by the stupid 
English people, which enables the present duke to 
appropriate so much of the earnings of so many 
thousands of the present generation of Englishmen. 

So, too, the great fortunes of the English brewers 
and distillers have been largely built up by the 
operation of the excise in fostering monopoly and 
concentrating the business. 



THE WRONG IN p:XISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 81 

Or, turning again to the United States, take the 
great fortune of the Astors. It represents for the 
most part a similar appropriation of the earnings of 
others, as does the income of the Duke of West- 
minster and other English landlords. The first As- 
tor made an arrangement with certain people living 
in his time by virtue of which his children are now 
allowed to tax other people's children — to demand 
a very large part of their earnings from many thou- 
sands of the present population of l^ew York. Its 
main element is not production or saving. 'No hu- 
man being can produce land or lay up land. If the 
Astors had all remained in Germany, or if there 
had never been any-Astors, the land of Manhattan 
Island would have been here all the same. 

Take the great Yanderbilt fortune. The first 
Yanderbilt was a boatman who earned money by 
hard work and saved it. But it was not working 
and saving that enabled him to leave such an enor- 
mous fortune. It was spoliation and monopoly. 
As soon as he got money enough he used it as a 
club to extort from others their earnings. He ran 
off opposition lines and monopolized routes of steam- 
boat travel. Then he went into railroads, pursuing 
the same tactics. The Yanderbilt fortune no more 
comes from working and saving than did the for- 
tune that Captain Kydd buried. 

Or take the great Gould fortune. Mr. Gould might 
have got his first little start by superior industry 
6 



82 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

and superior self-deniai. But it is not that which 
has made him the master of a hundred millions. It 
was by wrecking railroads, buying judges, corrupt- 
ing legislatures, getting up rings and pools and 
combinations to raise or depress stock values and 
transportation rates. 

So, likewise, of the great fortunes which the Pa- 
cific railroads have created. They have been made 
by lobbying through profligate donations of lands^ 
bonds and subsidies, by the operations of Credit 
Mobilier and Contract and Finance Companies, by 
monopolizing and gouging. And so of fortunes 
made by such combinations as the Standard Oil 
Company, the Bessemer Steel Eing, the "Whisky 
Tax Eing, the Lucifer Match Eing, and the various 
rings for the ' ' protection of the American workman 
from the pauper labor of Europe. " 

Or take the fortunes made out of successful patents. 
Like that element in so many fortunes that comes 
from the increased value of land, these result from 
monopoly, pure and simple. And though I am not 
now discussing the expediency of patent laws, it 
may be observed, in passing, that in the vast ma- 
jority of cases the men who make fortunes out of 
patents are not the men who make the inventions. 

Through all great fortunes, and, in fact, through 
nearly all acquisitions that in these days can fairly 
be termed fortunes, these elements of monopoly, of 
spoliation, of gambling run. The head of one of 



THE WRONG IN EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. bd 

tlie largest manufacturing firms in the United States 
said to me recently, " It is not on our ordinary busi- 
ness that we make our money ; it is where we can 
get a monopoly." And this, I think, is generally 
true. 

Consider the important part in building up for- 
tunes which the increase of land values has had, 
and is having, in the United States. This is, of 
course, monopoly, pure and simple. When land 
increases in value it does not mean that its owner 
has added to the general wealth. The owner may 
never have seen the land or done aught to improve 
it. He may, and often does, live in a distant city 
or in another country. Increase of land values 
simply means that the owners, by virtue of their 
appropriation of something that existed before man 
was, have the power of taking a larger share of the 
wealth produced by other people's labor. Consider 
how much the monopolies created and tlie advan- 
tages given to the unscrupulous by the tariff and 
by our system of internal taxation — how much the 
railroad (a business in its nature a monopoly), tele- 
graph, gas, water and other similar monopolies, 
have done to concentrate wealth ; how special rates, 
pools, combinations, corners, stock-watering and 
stock-gambling, the destructive use of wealth in 
driving ofi" or buying oif opposition which the pub- 
lic must finally pay for, and many other things 
which these will suggest, have operated to build up 



84 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

large fortunes, and it will at least appear that the 
unequal distribution of wealth is due in great meas> 
ure to sheer spoliation ; that the reason why those 
who work hard get so little, while so many who 
work little get so much, is, in verj^^ large measure, 
that the earnings of the one class are, in one way or 
another, filched away from them to swell the in- 
comes of the other. 

That individuals are constantly making their way 
from the ranks of those who get less than their 
earnings to the ranks of those Mdio get more than 
their earnings, no more proves this state of things 
right than the fact that merchant sailors were con- 
stantly becoming pirates and participating in the 
profits of piracy, would prove that piracy was right 
and that no efibrt should be made to suppress it. 

I am not denouncing the rich, nor seeking, by 
speaking of these things, to excite envy and hatred ; 
but if we would get a clear understanding of social 
problems, we must recognize the fact that it is to 
monopolies which we permit and create, to advant- 
ages which we give one man over another, to 
methods of extortion sanctioned by law and by 
public opinion, that some men are enabled to get 
so enormously rich while others remain so miserably 
poor. If we look around us and note the elements 
of monopoly, extortion and S])oliation which go to 
the building up of all, or nearly all, fortunes, we 
see on the one hand how disingenuous are those 



THE WRONG EST EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 85 

who preach to us that there is nothing wrong in 
social relations and that the inequalities in the dis- 
tribution of wealth spring from the inequalities of 
human nature ; and on the other hand, we see how 
wild are those who talk as though capital were a 
public enemy, and propose plans for arbitrarily re- 
stricting the acquisition of wealth. Capital is a 
good ; the capitalist is a helper, if he is not also a 
monopolist. We can safely let any one get as rich 
as he can if he will not despoil others in doing so. 
There are deep wrongs in the present constitution 
of society, but they are not wrongs inherent in the 
constitution of man nor in those social laws which 
are as truly the laws of the Creator as are the laws 
of the physical universe. They are wrongs result- 
ing from bad adjustments which it is within our 
power to amend. The ideal social state is not that 
in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but 
in which each gets in proportion to his contribution 
to the general stock. And in such a social state 
there would not be less incentive to exertion than 
now; there would be far more incentive. Men will be 
more industrious and more moral, better workmen and 
better citizens, if each takes his earnings and carries 
them home to his family, than where they put 
their earnings in a " pot" and gamble for them until 
some have far more than they could have earned, 
and others have little or nothing. 



CHAPTER YIL 

IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WOELDS ? 

There are worlds and worlds — even within tlie 
bounds of the same horizon. The man who comes 
into 'New York with plenty of money, who puts up 
at the Windsor or Brunswick, and is received by 
hospitable hosts in Fifth Avenue mansions, sees 
one New York. The man who comes with a dollar 
and a half, and goes to a twenty-live-cent lodging- 
house sees another. There are also fifteen-cent 
lodging-houses, and people too poor to go even to 
them. 

Into the pleasant avenues of the Park, in the 
bright May sunshine, dashes the railroad-wrecker's 
daughter, her tasty riding-habit floating free from 
the side of her glistening bay, and her belted groom, 
in fresh top-boots and smart new livery, clattering 
after, at a respectful distance, on another blooded 
horse, that chafes at the bit. The stock-gambler's 
son, rising from his trotter at every stride, in Eng- 
lish fashion, his English riding-stick grasped by the 
middle, raises his hat to her nod. And as he whirls 
past in his London-made dogcart, a liveried servant 
sitting with folded arms behind him, she exchanges 
salutations with the high-born descendant of the 

86 



IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS ? 87 

Dutch gardener, whose cabbage-patch, now covered 
with brick and mortar, has become an ' ' estate " 
of lordly income. While in the soft, warm air 
rings a musical note, and drawn by mettled steeds, 
the four-in-hands of the coaching-club rush by, with 
liveried guards and coach-tops filled with chattering 
people, to whom life, with its round of balls, parties, 
theaters, flirtations and excursions, is a holiday, in 
which, but for the invention of new pleasures, 
satiety would make time drag. 

How different this bright world from that of the 
old woman who, in the dingy lower street, sits from 
morning to night beside her little stock of apples 
and candy ; from that of the girls who stand all day 
behind counters and before looms, who bend over 
sewing-machines for weary, weary hours, or who 
come out at night to prowl the streets ! 

One railroad king puts the great provinces of his 
realm in charge of satraps and goes to Europe ; the 
new steel yacht of another is being fitted, regardless 
of expense, for a voyage around the world, if it 
pleases him to take it; a third will not go abroad — he 
is too busy buying in his ' ' little old railroad " every 
day. Other human beings are gathered into line 
every Sunday afternoon b}'' the E.ev. Coffee-and- 
rolls-man, and listen to his preaching for the dole 
they are to get. And upon the benches in the 
squares sit men from whose sullen, deadened faces 
the fire of energy and the light of hope have gone — 



88 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

" tramps " and "bums," the broken, rotted, human 
driftwood, the pariahs of our society. 

I stroll along Broadway in the evening, and by the 
magnificent saloon of the man who killed Jim Fisk, 
I meet a good fellow whom I knew years ago in 
California, when he could not jingle more than one 
dollar on another. It is different now, and he takes 
a wad of bills from his pocket to pay for the thirty- 
five-cent cigars we light. He has rooms in the 
most costly of Broadway hotels, his clothes are cut 
by Blissert, and he thinks Delmonico's about the 
only place to get a decent meal. He tells me about 
some ' ' big things " he has got into, and talks about 
millions as though they were marbles. If a man 
has any speed in him at all, he says, it is just as 
easy to deal in big things as in little things, and 
the men who play such large hands in the great game 
are no smarter than other men, when you get along- 
side of them and take their measure. As to politics, 
he says, it is only a question who hold the offices. 
The corporations rule the country, and are going to 
rule it, and the man is a fool who doesn't get on 
their side. As for the people, what do they know 
or care ! The press rules the people, and capital 
rules the press. Better hunt with the dogs than be 
hunted with the hare. 

We part, and as I turn down the street another 
acquaintance greets me, and, as his conversation 
grows interesting, I go out of my way, for to delay 



IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 1 89 

him were sin, as he must be at work by two in the 
morning. He has been trying to read ' ' Progress 
and Poverty," he says : but he has to take it in such 
little snatches, and the children make such a noise 
in his two small rooms — for his wife is afraid to let 
them out on the street to learn so much bad — that 
it is hard work to understand some parts of it. He 
is a journeyman baker, but he has a good situation 
as journeyman bakers go. He works in a restau- 
rant, and only twelve hours a day. Most bakers, 
he tells me, have to work fourteen and sixteen hours. 
Some of the places they work in would sicken a man 
not used to it, and even those used to it are forced 
to lie off every now and again, and to drink, or 
they could not stand it. In some bakeries they use 
good stock, he says, but they have to charge high 
prices, which only the richer people will pay. In 
most of them you often have to sift the maggots out 
of the iiour, and the butter is always rancid. He 
belongs to a Union, and they are trying to get in all 
the journeyman bakers ; but those that work longest, 
and have most need of it, are the hardest to get. 
Their long hours make them stupid, and take all the 
spirit out of them. He has tried to get into busi- 
ness for himself, and he and his wife once pinched 
and saved till they got a few hundred dollars, and 
then set up a little shop. But he had not money 
enough to buy a share in the Flour Association — a 
co-operative association of boss bakers, by which 



90 SOCIAL PEOBOIMS. 

the members get stock at lowest rates — and he could 
not compete, lost his money, and had to go to work 
again as a journeyman. He can see no chance at 
all of getting out of it, he says ; he sometimes thinks 
he might as well be a slave. His family grows 
larger and it costs more to keep them. His rent 
was raised two dollars on the 1st of May. His wife 
remonstrated with the agent, said they were making 
no more, and it cost them more to live. The agent 
said he could not help that ; the property had in- 
creased in value, and the rents must be raised. 
The reason people complained of rents was that they 
lived too extravagantly, and thought they must 
have everything anybody else had. People could 
live, and keep strong and fat, on nothing but oat- 
meal. If they would do that they would find it 
easy enough to pay their rent. 

There is such a rush across the Atlantic that it is 
difficult to engage a passage for months ahead. 
The doors of the fine, roomy houses in the fashion- 
able streets will soon be boarded up, as their owners 
leave for Europe, for the seashore, or the mountains. 
"Everybody is out of town," they will say. Not 
quite everybody, though. Some twelve or thirteen 
hundred thousand people, without counting Brooklyn, 
will be left to swelter through the hot summer. 
The swarming tenement-houses will not be board- 
ed up ; every window and door will be open to catch 
the least breath of air. The dirty streets will be 



IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS? 91 

crawling with squalid life, and noisj witli the play 
of unkempt children, who never saw a green field 
or watched the curl of a breaker, save perhaps, when 
charitj gave them a treat. Dragged women will be 
striving to quiet pining babies, sobbing and wailing 
away their little lives for the want of wholesome 
nourishment and fresh air ; and degradation and 
misery that hide during the winter will be seen on 
every hand. 

In such a city as this, the world of some is as 
different from the world in which others live as 
Jupiter may be from Mars. There are worlds we 
shut our eyes to, and do not bear to think of, still 
less to look at, but in which human beings yet live 
— worlds in which vice takes the place of virtue, 
and from which hope here and hope hereafter seem 
utterly banished — brutal, discordant, torturing hells 
of wickedness and suffering. 

' ' Why do they cry for bread ? " asked the innocent 
French princess, as the roar of the fierce, hungry 
mob resounded through the courtyard of Yersailles. 
"If they have no bread, why don't they eat cake?" 

Yet, not a fool above other fools was the pretty 
princess, who never in her whole life had known 
that cake was not to be had for the asking. ' ' Why 
are not the poor thrifty and virtuous and wise and 
temperate ? " one hears whenever in luxurious par- 
lors such subjects are mentioned. What is this but 
the question of the French princess. Thrift and 



92 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

virtue and wisdom and temperance are not the 
fruits of poverty. 

But it is not this of which I intended here to speak 
so much as of that complacent assumption which 
runs through current thought and speech, that this 
world in which we, nineteenth century, Christian, 
American men and women live, is, in its social 
adjustments, at least, about such a world as the 
Almighty intended it to be. 

Some say this in terms, others say it by implica- 
tion, but. in one form or another it is constantly 
taught. Even the wonders of modern invention 
have, with a most influential part of society, scarcely 
shaken the belief that social improvement is im- 
possible. Men of the sort who, a little while ago, 
derided the idea that steam-carriages might be 
driven over the land and steam-vessels across the 
sea, would not now refuse to believe in the most 
startling mechanical invention. But he who thinks 
society may be improved, he who thinks that pov- 
erty and greed may be driven from the world, is 
still looked upon in circles that pride themselves on 
their culture and rationalism as a dreamer, if not as 
a dangerous lunatic. 

The old idea that everything in the social world 
is ordered by the Divine Will — that it is the mys- 
terious dispensations of Providence that give wealth 
to the few and order poverty as the lot of the many, 
make some rulers and the others serfs — is losing 



IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS? 93 

power; but another idea that serves the same pur- 
pose is taking its place, and we are told, in the 
name of science, that the only social improvement 
that is possible is by a slow race-evolation, of which 
the fierce struggle for existence is the impelling 
force ; that, as I have recently read in "a journal ot 
civilization" from the pen of a man who has turned 
from the preaching of wha,t he called Christianity to 
the teaching of what he calls political economy, 
that " only the elite of the race has been raised to 
the point where reason and conscience can even 
curb the lower motive forces," and "that for all but 
a few of us the limit of attainment in life, in the 
best case, is to liveT)ut our term, to pay our debts, 
to place three or four children in a position as good 
as the father's was, and there make the account 
balance." As for "friends of humanity," and those 
who would "help the poor," they get from him the 
same scorn which the Scribes and Pharisees eigh- 
teen hundred years ago visited on a pestilent social 
reformer whom they finally crucified. 

Lying beneath all such theories is the selfishness 
that would resist any inquiry into the titles to the 
wealth which greed has gathered, and the difiiculty 
and indisposition on the part of the comfortable 
classes of realizing the existence of any other world 
than that seen through their own eyes. 

"That one-half of the world does not know how 
the other half live, " is much more true of the upper 



94 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

than of the lower half. We look upon that which 
is pleasant rather than that which is disagreeable. 
The shop-girl delights in the loves of the Lord de 
Maltravers and the Lady Blanche, just as children 
without a penny will gaze in confectioners' windows, 
as hungry men dream of feasts, and poor men relish 
tales of sudden wealth. And social suffering is 
for the most part mute. The well-dressed take the 
main street, but the ragged slink into the by-ways. 
The man in a good coat will be listened to where 
the same man in tatters would be hustled off. It 
is that part of society that has the best reason to be 
satisfied with things as they are that is heard in the 
press, in the church, and in the school, and that 
forms the conventional opinion that this world in 
which we American Christians, in the latter half of 
the nineteenth century, live is about as good a 
world as the Creator (if there is a Creator) intended 
it should be. 

But look around. All over the world the beauty 
and the glory and the grace of civilization rest 
on human lives crushed into misery and distor- 
tion. 

I will not speak of Germany, of France, of Eng- 
land. Look even here, where European civilization 
flowers in the free field of a new continent ; where 
there are no kings, no great standing armies, no 
relics of feudal servitude ; where national existence 
began with the solemn declaration of the equal and 



Is It the best of all possible worlds? 95 

inalienable rights of men. I clip, almost at ran- 
dom, from a daily paper, for I am not seeking the 
blackest shadows : 

"Margaret Hickey, aged 30 years, came to this city a few 
days ago from Boston with a seven-week-old baby. She 
tried to get work, but was not successful. Saturday night 
she placed the child in a cellar at No. 226 West Forty -second 
street. At midnight she called at Police Headquarters and 
said she had lost her baby in Forty-third street. In the 
meantime an officer found the child. The mother was held 
until yesterday morning, when she was taken to the York- 
ville Court and sent to the Island for six months." 

Morning and evening, day after day, in these 
times of peace and prosperity, one may read in 
our daily papers such items as this, and worse than 
this. We are so used to them that they excite no 
attention and no comment. We know what the fate 
of Margaret Hickey, aged thirty years, and of her 
baby, aged seven weeks, sent to the Island for six 
months, will be. Better for them and better for 
society were they drowned outright, as we would 
drown a useless cat and mangy kitten ; but so com- 
mon are such items that we glance at them as we 
glance at the number of birds wounded at a pigeon- 
match, and turn to read "what is going on in soci- 
ety ; " of the last new opera or play ; of the cottages 
taken for the season at Newport or Long Branch ; 
of the millionaire's divorce or the latest great defal- 
cation ; how Ileber Newton is to be driven out of the 
Episcopal church for declaring the Song of Solomon 



96 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

a love-drama, and the story of Jonah and the whale 
a poetical embellishment ; or how the great issue 
which the American people are to convulse them- 
selves about next year is the turning of the Kepub- 
lican party out of power. 

I read the other day in a Brooklyn paper of a 
coroner's jury summoned to inquire, as the law 
directs, into the cause of death of a two days' 
infant. The unwholesome room was destitute of 
everything save a broken chair, a miserable bed and 
an empty whisky-bottle. On the bed lay, uncared 
for, a young girl, mother of the dead infant ; over 
the chair, in drunken stupor, sprawled a man — 
her father. "The horror-stricken jury," said the 
report, " rendered a verdict in accordance with the 
facts, and left the place as fast as thej'- could." So 
do we turn from these horrors. Are there not 
policemen and station-houses, almshouses and char- 
itable societies ? 

Nevertheless, we send missionaries to the heath- 
en ; and I read the other day how the missionaries, 
sent to preach to the Hindoos the Baptist version 
of Christ's Gospel, had been financed out of the 
diiference between American currency and Indian 
rupees by the godly men who stay at home and 
boss the job. Yet, from Arctic to Antarctic Circle, 
where are the heathen among whom such degrad- 
ed and distorted human beings are to be found as 
in om' centers of so-called Christian civilization, 



IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS ? 97 

where we have such a respect for the all-seeing eye 
of God that if you want a drink on Sunaay you 
must go into the saloon by the back door ? Among 
what tribe of savages, who never saw a missionary, 
can the cold-blooded horrors testified to in the 
Tewksbury Almshouse investigation be matched? 
' ' Babies don't generally live long here, " they told the 
farmer's wife who brought them a little waif. And 
neither did they — seventy-three out of seventy-four 
dying in a few weeks, their little bodies sold oflP at a 
round rate per dozen to the dissecting table, and a 
six-months' infant left there two days losing three 
pounds in weight. Nor did adults — the broken men 
and women who there sought shelter — fare better. 
They were robbed, starved, beaten, turned into 
marketable corpses as fast as possible, while the 
highly respectable managers waxed fat and rich, 
and set before legislative committees the best of 
dinners and the choicest of wines. It were slan- 
der to dumb brutes to speak of the bestial cruelty 
disclosed I: y the opening of this whited sepulchre. 
Yet, not only do the representatives of the wealth 
and culture and "high moral ideas" of Massachu- 
setts receive coldly these revelations, they fight 
bitterly the man who has made them, as though 
the dragging of such horrors to light, not the doing 
of them, were the unpardonable sin. They were 
only paupers ! And I read in the journal founded 
by Horace Greeley, that ' '• the woes of the Tewks- 



ya SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

bury paupers are no worse than the common lot of 
all inmates of pauper refuges the country over." 

Or take the revelations made this winter before a 
legislative committee of the barbarities practiced in 
New York state prisons. The system remains un- 
altered ; not an official has been even dismissed. 
The belief that dominates our society is evidently that 
which I find expressed in "a journal of civilization " 
by a reverend professor at Yale, that "the criminal 
has no claims against society at all. What shall be 
done with him is a question of expediency ! " I 
wonder if our missionaries to the heathen ever 
read the American papers? I am certain they 
don't read them to the heathen. 

Behind all this is social disease. Criminals, 
paupers, prostitutes, women who abandon their 
children, men who kill themselves in despair of 
making a living, the existence of great armies 
of beggars and thieves, prove that there are large 
classes who find it difficult with the hardest toil 
to make an honest and sufficient livelihood. So it 
is. "There is," incidentally said to me, recently, 
a IN'ew York Supreme Judge, ' ' a large class — I was 
about to say a majority — of the population of New 
York and Brooklyn, who just live, and to whom the 
rearing of two more children means inevitably a 
boy for the penitentiary and a girl for the brothel. " 
A partial report of charitable work in New York 
city, not embracing the operations of a number of 



IS IT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS ? 99 

important societies, sliows 36,000 families obtaining 
relief, while it is estimated that were the houses in 
New York city containing criminals and the 
recipients of charity set side by side they would 
make a street twenty-two miles long. One charita- 
ble society in New York city extended aid this winter 
to the families of three hundred tailors. Their 
wages are so small when they do work that when 
work gives out they must beg, steal or starve. 

Nor is this state of things confined to the metropo- 
lis. In Massachusetts the statistician of the Labor 
Bureau declares that among wage laborers the 
earnings (exclusive of the earnings of minors) are 
less than the cost of living ; that in the majority of 
cases workingmen do not support their families on 
their individual earnings alone, and that fathers are 
forced to depend upon their children for from one- 
quarter to one-third of the family earnings, children 
under fifteen supplying from one-eighth to one- 
sixth of the total earnings. Miss Emma E. Brown 
has shown how parents are forced to evade the law 
prohibiting the employment of young children, and 
in Pennsylvania, where a similar law has been 
passed, I read how, forced by the same necessity, 
the operatives of a mill have resolved to boycott a 
storekeeper whose relative had informed that 
children under thirteen were employed. "While 
in Canada last winter it was shown that children 
under thirteen were kept at work in the mills from 



100 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

six in the evening to six in the morning, a man on 
duty with a strap to keep them awake. 

Illinois is one of the richest States of the Union. 
It is scarcely yet fairly settled, for the last census 
shows the male population in excess of the female, 
and wages are considerably higher than in more 
eastern States. In their last report the Illinois 
Commissioners of Labor Statistics say that their 
tables of wages and cost of living are representative 
only of intelligent workingmen who make the most 
of their advantages, and do not reach ' ' the confines 
of that world of helpless ignorance and destitution 
in which multitudes in all large cities continually 
live, and whose only statistics are those of epi- 
demics, pauperism and crime. " Nevertheless, they 
go on to say, an examination of these tables will 
demonstrate that one-half of these intelligent work- 
ingmen of Illinois " are not even able to earn 
enough for their daily bread, and have to depend 
upon the labor of women and children to eke out 
their miserable existence." 

It is the fool who saith in his heart there is no 
God. But what shall we call the man who tells us 
that with this sort of a world God bids us be content? 



CHAPTEE YIII. 

THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE RICH. 

The terms rich and poor are of course frequently 
used in a relative sense. Among Irish peasants, 
kept on the verge of starvation by the tribute wrung 
from them to maintain the luxury of absentee land- 
lords in London or Paris, "the woman of three 
cows" will be looked on as rich, while in the society 
of millionaires a man with only $500, 000 will be re- 
garded as poor. Kow, we cannot, of course, all be 
rich in the sense of having more than others ; but 
when people say, as they so often do, that we cannot 
all be rich, or when they say that we must always 
have the poor with us, they do not use the words in 
this comparative sense. They mean by the rich 
those who have enough, or more than enough, 
wealth to gratify all reasonable wants, and by the 
poor those who have not. 

IS'ow, using the words in this sense, T join issue 
with those who say that we cannot all be rich ; with 
those who declare that in human society the poor 
must always exist. I do not, of course, mean that 
we all might have an array of servants ; that we all 
might outshine each other in dress, in equipage, in 
the lavishness of our balls or dinners, in the mag- 

101 



102 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

nificence of our houses. That would be a contra 
diction in terms. What I mean is, that we all 
might have leisure, comfort and abundance, not 
merely of the necessaries, but even of what are now 
esteemed the elegancies and luxuries of life. I do 
not mean to say that absolute equality could be had, 
or would be desirable. I do not mean to say that 
we could all have, or would want, the same quantity 
of all the different forms of wealth. But I do mean 
to ssij that we might all have enough wealth to sat- 
isfy reasonable desires ; that we might all have so 
much of the material things we now struggle for, 
that no one would want to rob or swindle his neigh- 
bor ; that no one would worry all day, or lie awake 
at nights, fearing he might be brought to poverty, 
or thinking how he might acquire wealth. 

Does this seem an Utopian dream ? What would 
people of fifty years ago have thought of one who 
would have told them that it was possible to sew by 
steam-power ; to cross the Atlantic in six days, or 
the continent in three ; to have a message sent from 
London at noon delivered in Boston three hours be- 
fore noon ; to hear in New York the voice of a man 
talking in Chicago? 

Did you ever see a pail of swill given to a pen of 
hungry hogs? That is human society as it is. 

Did you ever see a company of well-bred men and 
women sitting down to a good dinner, without scram- 
bling, or jostling, or gluttony, each, knowing that 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE KICH. 103 

Ms own appetite will be satisfied, deferring to and 
helping the others? That is human society as it 
might be. 

' ' Devil catch the hindmost " is the motto of our 
so-called civilized society to-day. We learn early 
to "take care of ISTo. 1," lest JSTo. 1 should suffer; 
we learn early to grasp from others that we may not 
want ourselves. The fear of poverty makes us ad- 
mire great wealth ; and so habits of greed are 
formed, and we behold the pitiable spectacle of 
men who have already more than they can by any 
possibility use, toiling, striving, grasping to add to 
their store up to the very verge of the grave — that 
grave which, whatever else it may mean, does cer- 
tainly mean the parting with all earthly possessions 
however great they be. 

In vain, in gorgeous churches, on the appointed 
Sunday, is the parable of Dives and Lazarus read. 
What can it mean in churches where Dives would 
be welcomed and Lazarus shown the door? In 
vain may the preacher preach of the vanity of 
riches, while poverty engulphs the hindermost. 
But the mad struggle would cease when the fear of 
poverty had vanished. Then, and not till then, will 
a truly Christian civilization become possible. 

And may not this be ? 

We are so accustomed to poverty that even in the 
most advanced countries we regard it as the natural 
lot of the great masses of the people ; that we take 



104 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

it as a matter of course that even in our highest 
civilization large classes should want the necessaries 
of healthful life, and the vast raajority should only 
get a poor and pinched living by the hardest toil. 
There are professors of political economy who teach 
that this condition of things is the result of social 
laws of which it is idle to complain ! There are 
ministers of religion who preach that this is the 
condition which an all-wise, all-powerful Creator 
intended for his children ! If an architect were to 
build a theatre so that not more than one-tenth of 
the audience could see and hear, we would call him 
a bungler and a botch. If a man were to give a 
feast and provide so little food that nine-tenths of 
his guests must go away hungry, we would call him 
a fool, or worse. Yet so accustomed are we to 
poverty, that even the preachers of what passes for 
Christianity tell us that the great Architect of the 
Universe, to whose infinite skill all nature testifies, 
has made such a botch job of this world that the 
vast majority of the human creatures whom he has 
called into it are condemned by the conditions he 
has imposed to want, suffering, and brutalizing toil 
that gives no opportunity for the development of 
mental powers^ — must pass their lives in a hard 
struggle to merely live ! 

Yet who can look about him without seeing that 
to whatever cause poverty may be due, it is not due 
to the niggardliness of nature ; without seeing that 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE KICH. 105 

it is blindness or blasphemy to assume that the 
Creator has condemned the masses of men to hard 
toil for a bare living ? 

If some men have not enough to live decently, 
do not others have far more than they really 
need ? If there is not wealth sufficient to go around, 
giving every one abundance, is it because we have 
reached the limit of the production of wealth ? Is 
our land all in use? is our labor all employed ? is 
our capital all utilized ? On the contrary, in what- 
ever direction we look we see the most stupendous 
waste of productive forces — of productive forces so 
potent that were they permitted to freely play the 
production of wealth would be so enormous that 
there would be more than a sufficiency for all. What 
branch of production is there in which the limit 
of production has been reached? What single 
article of wealth is there of which we might not 
produce enormously more? 

If the mass of the population of 'New York are 
jammed into the fever-breeding rooms of tenement- 
houses, it is not because there are not vacant lots 
enough in and around New York to give eacli 
family space for a separate home. If settlers are going 
into Montana and Dakota and Manitoba, it is not be- 
cause there are not vast areas of untilled land much 
nearer the centres of population. If farmers are 
paying one-fourth, one-third, or even one-half their 
crops for the privilege of getting land to cultivate, 



106 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

it is not because there are not, even in our oldest 
states, great quantities of land which no one is 
cultivating. 

So true is it that poverty does not come from the 
inability to produce more wealth that from every 
side we hear that the power to produce is in excess 
of the ability to find a market ; that the constant 
fear seems to be not that too little, but that too much, 
will be produced ! Do we not maintain a high 
tarifi, and keep at every port a horde of Custom 
House officers, for fear the people of other countries 
will overwhelm us with their goods ? Is not a great 
part of our machinery constantly idle ? Are there 
not, even in what we call good times, an immense 
number of unemployed men who would gladly be 
at work producing wealth if they could only get the 
opportunity? Do we not, even now, hear, from 
every side, of embarrassment from the very excess 
of productive power, and of combinations to reduce 
production ? Coal operators band together to limit 
their output; ironworks have shut down, or are 
running on half time ; distillers have agreed to 
limit their production to one-half their capacity, and 
sugar refiners to sixty per cent ; paper-mills are sus- 
pending for one, two or three days a week ; the 
gunny cloth manufacturers, at a recent meeting, 
agreed to close their mills until the present over- 
stock on the market is greatly reduced ; many other 
manufacturers have done the same thing. The 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE EICH. 107 

shoemaking machiner j of New England can, in six 
months full running, it is said, supply the whole 
demand of the United States for twelve months ; 
the machinery for making rubber goods can turn 
out twice as much as the market will take. 

This seeming glut of production, this seeming ex- 
cess of productive power, runs through all branches 
of industry, and is evident all over the civilized 
world. From blackberries, bananas or apples, to 
ocean steamships or plate-glass mirrors, there is 
scarcely an article of human comfort or convenience 
that could not be produced in very much greater 
quantities than now without lessening the production 
of anything else. 

So evident is this that many people think and 
talk and write as though the trouble is that there is 
not worlf, enough to go around. We are in constant 
fear that other nations may do for us some of the 
work we might do for ourselves, and, to prevent 
them, guard ourselves with a tariif. "We laud as 
public benefactors those who, as we say, "furnish 
employment." We are constantly talking as though 
this "furnishing of employment," this " giving of 
work " were the greatest boon that could be conferred 
upon society. To listen to much that is talked and 
much that is written, one would think that the cause 
of poverty is that there is not work enough for so 
many people, and that if the Creator had made the 
rock harder, the soil less fertile, iron as scarce as 



108 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

gold, and gold as diamonds ; or if ships would sink 
and cities burn down oftener, there would be less 
poverty, because there would be more work to do. 

The Lord Mayor of London tells a deputation of 
unemployed workingmen that there is no demand 
for their labor, and that the only resource for them 
is to go to the poorhouse or emigrate. The English 
Government is shipping from Ireland able-bodied 
men and women to avoid maintaining them as pau- 
pers. Even in our own land there are at all times 
large numbers, and in hard times vast numbers, 
earnestly seeking work — the opportunity to give 
labor for the things produced by labor. 

Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the enormous 
forces of production constantly going to waste than 
the fact that the most prosperous time in all branches 
of business that this country has known was during 
the civil war, when we were maintaining great fleets 
and armies, and millions of our industrial popu- 
lation were engaged in supplying them with wealth 
for unproductive consumption or for reckless de- 
struction. It is idle to talk about the fictitious pros- 
perity of those " flush " times. The masses of the 
people lived better, dressed better, found it easier 
to get a living, and had more of luxuries and amuse- 
ments than in normal times. There was more real, 
tangible wealth in the North at the close than at the 
beginning of the war. Nor was it the great issue 
of paper money, nor the creation of the debt which 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE EIOH. 309 

eaused this prosperity. The Government presses 
struck off promises to pay ; they could not print 
ships, cannon, arms, tools, food and clothing, Nor 
did we borrow these things from other countries or 
"from posterity." Our bonds did not begin to 
go to Europe until the close of the war, and the peo- 
ple of one generation can no more borrow from the 
people of a subsequent generation than we who live 
on this planet can borrow from the inhabitants of 
another planet or another solar system. The wealth 
consumed and destroyed by our fleets and armies 
came from the then existing stock of wealth. "We 
could have carried on the war without the issue of a 
single bond, if, when^we did not shrink from taking 
from wife and children their only bread-winner, we 
had not shrunk from taking the wealth of the rich. 
Our armies and fleets were maintained, the enor- 
mous unproductive and destructive use of wealth was 
kept up, by the labor and capital then and there en- 
gaged in production. And it was that the demand 
caused by the war stimulated productive forces into 
activity that the enormous drain of the war was not 
only supplied, but that the North grew richer. The 
waste of labor in marching and counter-marching, 
in. digging trenches, throwing up earthworks, and 
fighting battles, the waste of wealth consumed or 
destroyed by our armies and fleets did not amount 
to as much as the waste constantly going on from 
unemployed labor and idle or partially used ma- 
chinery. 



110 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

It is evident that this enormous waste of produo- 
tive power is due, not to defects in the laws oi 
nature, but to social maladjustments which deny to 
labor access to the natural opportunities of labor 
and rob the laborer of his just reward. Evidently 
the glut of markets does not really come from over- 
production when there are so many who want the 
things which are said to be over-produced, and 
would gladly exchange their labor for them did 
they have opportunity. Every day passed in 
enforced idleness by a laborer who would gladly be 
at work could he find opportunity, means so much 
less in the fund which creates the eifective demand 
for other labor ; every time wages are screwed 
down means so much reduction in the purchasing 
power of the workmen whose incomes are thus 
reduced. The paralysis which at all time wastes 
productive power, and which in times of industrial 
depression causes more loss than a great war, 
springs from the difficulty which those who would 
gladly satisfy their wants by their labor find in 
doing so. It cannot come from any natural limitar 
tion, so long as human desires remain unsatisfied, 
and nature yet offers to man the raw material of 
wealth. It must come from social maladjustments 
which permit the monopolization of these natural 
opportunities, and which rob labor of its fair reward. 

What these maladjustments are I shall in subse- 
quent chapters endeavor to show. In this I wish 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE EIOH. Ill 

simply to call attention to the fact that productive 
power in such a state of civilization as ours is 
sufficient, did we give it play, to so enormously 
increase the production of wealth as to give 
abundance to all — to point out that the cause of 
poverty is not in natural limitations, which we 
cannot alter, but in inequalities and injustices of 
distribution entirely within our control. 

The passenger who leaves New York on a trans- 
Atlantic steamer does not fear that the provisions 
will give out. The men who run these steamers do 
not send them to sea without provisions enough for 
all they carry. Did He who made this whirling 
planet for our sojourn lack the forethought of man ? 
]^ot so. In soil and sunshine, in vegetable and 
animal life, in veins of minerals, and in pulsing 
forces which we are only beginning to use, are capa- 
bilities which we cannot exhaust — materials and 
powers from which human effort, guided by intelli- 
gence, may gratify every material want of every 
human creature. There is in nature no reason fcx* 
poverty — not even for the poverty of the crippled 
or the decrepit. For man is by nature a social 
animal, and the family affections and the social 
sympathies would, where chronic poverty did not 
distort and embrute, amply provide for those who 
could not provide for themselves. 

But if we will not use the intelligence with which 
we have been gifted to adapt social org-anization to 



112 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

natural laws — if we allow dogs-in-the-manger to 
monopolize what they cannot use ; if we allow 
strength and cunning to rob honest labor, we must 
have chronic poverty, and all the social evils it in- 
evitably brings. Under such conditions there 
would be poverty in paradise. 

"The poor ye have always with you." If ever a 
scripture has been wrested to the devil's service, 
this is that scripture. How often have these words 
been distorted from their obvious meaning to soothe 
conscience into acquiescence in human misery and 
degradation — to bolster that blasphemy, the very 
negation and denial of Christ's teachings, that the 
AH Wise and Most Merciful, the Infinite Father, 
has decreed that so many of his creatures must be 
poor in order that others of his creatures to whom he 
wills the good things of life should enjoy the pleas- 
ure and virtue of doling out alms ! " The poor ye 
have always with you," said Christ ; but all his 
teachings supply the limitation, ' ' until the coming 
of the Kingdom." In that kingdom of God on 
earthy that kingdom of justice and love for which 
he taught his followers to strive and pray, there will 
be no poor. But though the faith and the hope and 
the striving for this kingdom are of the very essence 
of Christ's teaching, the staunchest disbelievers and 
revilers of its possibility are found among those who 
call themselves Christians. Queer ideas of the 
Divinity have some of these Christians who hold 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE EICH. 113 

themselves orthodox and contribute to the conversion 
of the heathen. A very rich orthodox Christian 
said to a newspaper reporter, awhile ago, on the 
completion of a large work out of which he is said 
to have made millions : " We have been pecu- 
liarly favored by Divine Providence ; iron never 
was so cheap before, and labor has been a drug in 
the market."' 

That in spite of all our great advances we have yet 
with us the poor, those who, without fault of their 
own, cannot get healthful and wholesome conditions 
of life, is oxir fault and our shame. Who that 
looks about him can fail to see that it is only the 
injustice that denies- natural opportunities to labor, 
and robs the producer of the fruits of his toil, that 
prevents us all from being rich. Consider the enor- 
mous powers of production now going to waste ; 
consider the great number of unproductive con- 
sumers maintained at the expense of producers — 
the rich men and dudes, the worse than useless Gov- 
ernment officials, the pickpockets, burglars and confi- 
dence men; the highlj^ respectable thieves who 
carry on their operations inside the law ; the great 
army of lawyers ; the beggars and paupers, and in- 
mates of prisons ; the monopolists and cornerers 
and gamblers of every kind and grade. Consider 
how much brains and energy and capital are devoted, 
not to the production of wealth, but to the grabbing 
of wealth. Consider the waste caused by competi- 
8 



114 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

tion which does not increase wealth ; by laws which 
restrict production and exchange. Consider how 
human power is lessened by insufficient food, by 
unwholesome lodgings, by work done under condi- 
tions that produce disease and shorten life. Con= 
sider how intemperance and unthrift follow poverty. 
Consider how the ignorance bred of poverty lessens 
production, and how the vice bred of poverty causes 
destruction, and who can doubt that under condi- 
tions of social justice all might be rich? 

The wealth-producing powers that would be 
evoked in a social state based on justice, where 
wealth went to the producers of wealth, and the 
banishment of poverty had banished the fear and 
greed and lusts that spring from it, we now can 
only faintly imagine. Wonderful as have been the 
discoveries and inventions of this century, it is evi- 
dent that we have only begun to grasp that domin- 
ion which it is given to mind to obtain over matter. 
Discovery and invention are born of leisure, of ma- 
terial comfort, of freedom. These secured to all, 
and who shall say to what command over nature 
man may not attain ? 

It is not necessary that any one should be con- 
demned to monotonous toil ; it is not necessary that 
any one should lack the wealth and the leisure 
which permit the development of the faculties that 
raise man above the animal. Mind, not muscle, is 
the motor of progress, the force which compela 



THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE RICH. 115 

nature and produces wealth. In turning men into 
machines we are wasting tlie highest powers. Al 
ready in our society there is a favored class who 
need take no thought for the morrow — what they 
shall eat, or what they shall drink, or wherewithal 
they shall be ■ clothed. And may it not be that 
Christ was more than a dreamer when he told his 
disciples that in that kingdom of justice for which 
he taught them to work and pray this might be the 
condition of all 2 



CHAPTER IX. 

FIEST PEINCIPLES. 

Whoever considers the political and social prob- 
lems that confront us, must see that thej centre in 
the problem of the distribution of wealth, and he 
must also see that, though their solution may be 
simple, it must be radical. 

For every social wrong there must be a remedy. 
But the remedy can be nothing less than the aboli- 
tion of the wrong. Half-way measures, mere ameli- 
orations and secondary reforms, can at any time 
accomplish little, and can in the long run avail 
nothing. Our charities, our penal laws, our re- 
strictions and prohibitions, by which, with so little 
avail, we endeavor to assuage poverty and check 
crime, what are they, at the very best, but the de- 
vice of the clown who, having put the whole bur- 
den of his ass into one pannier, sought to enable 
the poor animal to walk straight by loading up the 
other pannier with stones. 

In New York, as I write, the newspapers and the 
churches are calling for subscriptions to their "-fresh 
air funds," that little children may be taken for a 
day or for a week from the deadly heat of stifling 
tenement rooms and given a breath of the fresh 

116 



FIRST PEINCIPLES. 3.17 

breeze of sea sliore or mountain ; but liow little 
does it avail, when we take sucii cliildren only to 
return them to their previous conditions — con- 
ditions which to many mean even worse than death 
of tlie body ; conditions which make it certain that 
of the lives that may thus be saved, some are saved 
for the brothel and the almshouse, and some for the 
penitentiary. We may go on forever merely rais- 
ing fresh air funds, and how great soever be the 
funds we raise, the need will only grow, and chil- 
dren — just such children as those of whom Christ 
said, ' ' Take heed that ye despise not one of these 
little ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their 
angels do always behold the face of my Father " — 
will die like flies, so long as poverty compels fathers 
and mothers to the life of the squalid tenement- 
room. We may open "midnight missions" and 
support "Christian homes for destitute young 
girls, " but what will they avail in the face of gen- 
eral conditions which render so many men unable 
to support a wife ; which make young girls think it 
a privilege to be permitted to earn three dollars by 
eighty-one hours' work, and which can drive a 
mother to such despair that she will throw her 
babies from a wharf of our Christian city and then 
leap into the river herself! How vainly shall we 
endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punish- 
ment of the poorer class of criminals so long as 
children are reared in the brutalizing influences of 



118 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

poverty, so long as the bite of want drives men to 
crime? How little better than idle is it for iis to 
prohibit infant labor in factories when the scale of 
wages is so low that it will not enable fathers to 
support their families without the earnings of their 
little children? How shall we try to prevent politi- 
cal corruption by framing new checks and setting 
one official to watch another official, when the 
fear of want stimulates the lust for wealth, and 
the rich thief is honored while honest poverty is 
despised ? 

Kor yet could we accomplish any permanent 
equalization in the distribution of wealth were we 
to forcibly take from those who have and give to those 
who have not. We would do great injustice ; we 
would work great harm ; but, from the very mo- 
ment of such a forced equalization, the tendencies 
which show themselves in the present unjust in- 
equalities would begin to assert themselves again, 
and we would in a little while have as gross 
inequalities as before. 

What we must do if we would cure social disease 
and avert social danger is to remove the causes 
which prevent the just distribution of wealth. 

Tins work is only one of removal. It is not nec- 
essary for us to frame elaborate and skillful plans 
for securing the just distribution of wealth. For 
the just distribution of wealth is manifestly the 
natural distribution of wealth, and injustice in the 



riEST PEINCIPLES. 113 

distribution of wealth must, therefore, result from 
artificial obstructions to this natural distribution. 

As to what is the just distribution of wealth there 
can be no dispute. It is that which gives wealth to 
him who makes it, and secures wealth to him who 
saves it. So clearly is this the only just distribution 
of wealth that even those shallow writers who at- 
tempt to defend the existing order of things are 
driven, by a logical necessity, to falsely assume that 
those who now possess the larger share of wealth 
made it and saved it, or got it by gift or by inherit- 
ance, from those who did make it and save it ; 
whereas the fact is, as I have in a previous paper 
shown, that all these great fortunes, whose corolla- 
ries are paupers and tramps, really come from the 
sheer appropriation of the makings and savings of 
other people. 

And that this just distribution of wealth is the 
natural distribution of wealth can be plainly seen, 
l^ature gives wealth to labor, and to nothiug but 
labor. There is, and there can be, no article of 
wealth but such as labor has got by making it, or 
searching for it, out of the raw material which the 
Creator has given us to draw from. If there were 
but one man in the world it is manifest that he 
could have no more wealth than he was able to 
make and to save. This is the natural order. 
And, no matter how great be the population, or 
how elaborate the society, no one can have more 



120 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

wealth tlian he produces and saves, unless he gets 
it as a free gift from some one else, or by appro- 
priating the earnings of some one else. 

An English writer has divided all men into three 
classes — workers, beggars and thieves. The classi- 
fication is not complimentary to the " upper classes " 
and the "better classes," as they are accustomed to 
esteem themselves, yet it is economically true. 
There are only three ways by which any individual 
can get wealth — by work, by gift or by theft. 
And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so 
little is that the beggars and thieves get so much. 
"When a man gets wealth that he does not produce, 
he necessarily gets it at the expense of those who 
produce it. 

All we need do to secure a just distribution of 
wealth, is to do that which all theories agree to be 
the primary function of government — to secure to 
each the free use of his own powers, limited only 
by the equal freedom of all others ; to secure to 
each the full enjoyment of his own earnings, limited 
only by such contributions as he may be fairly 
called upon to make for purposes of common ben- 
efit. When we have done this we shall have done 
all that we can do to make social institutions con- 
form to the sense of justice and to the natural 
order. 

I wish to emphasize this point, for there are those 
who constantly talk and write as though whoevef 



FIRST PEESrCIPLES. 121 

finds fault with the present distribution of wealth 
were demanding that the rich should be spoiled for 
the benefit of the poor ; that the idle should be 
taken care of at the expense of the industrious, and 
that a false and impossible equality should be created, 
which, by reducing every one to the same dead 
level, would destroy all incentive to excel and bring 
progress to a halt. 

In the reaction from the glaring injustice of pres- 
ent social conditions, such wild schemes have been 
proposed, and still find advocates. But to my way 
of thinking they are as impracticable and repugnant 
as they can seem to those who are loudest in 
their denunciations of "commimism." I am not 
willing to say that in the progress of humanity 
a state of society may not be possible which shall 
realize the formula of Louis Blanc, "From each 
according to his abilities ; to each according to 
his wants," for there exist to-day in the religious 
Orders of the Catholic Church, associations which 
maintain the communism of early Christianity. 
But it seems to me that the only power by 
which such a state of society can be attained and 
preserved is that which the framers of the 
schemes I speak of generally ignore, even when 
they do not directly antagonize — a deep, definite, 
intense, religious faith, so clear, so burning as to 
utterly melt away the thought of self — a general 
moral condition such as that which the Methodists 



122 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

declare, under the name of "sanctification," to be 
individually possible, in which the dream of pris- 
tine innocence should become reality, and man, so 
to speak, should again walk with God. 

But the possibility of such a state of society 
seems to me in the present stage of human devel- 
opment a speculation which comes within the higher 
domain of religious faith rather than that with which 
the economist or practical statesman can concern 
himself. That nature, as it is apparent to us here, in 
this infinitesimal point in space and time that we 
call the world, is the highest expression of the 
power and purpose that called the universe into 
being, what thoughtful man dare afiirm ? Yet it is 
manifest that the only way by which man may 
attain higher things is by conforming his conduct 
to those commandments which are as obvious in 
his relations with his fellows and with external 
nature as though they were graved by the finger of 
Omnipotence upon tablets of imperishable stone. 
In the order of moral development, Moses comes 
before Christ — ' ' Thou shalt not kill " ; " Thou shalt 
not commit adultery"; "Thou shalt not steal"; 
before "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " 
The command "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that 
treadeth out the corn," precedes the entrancing 
vision of universal peace, in which even Nature's 
rapine shall cease, when the lion shall lay down 
with the lamb and a little child shall lead them. 



FIEST PRINCIPLES. 123 

That justice is the highest quality in the moral 
hierarchy I do not say; but that it is the first. 
That which is above justice must be based on justice, 
and include justice, and be reached through justice. 
It is not by accident that, in the Hebraic religious 
development which through Christianity we have 
inherited, the declaration, "The Lord thy God is 
a just God," precedes the sweeter revelation of a 
God of Love. Until the eternal justice is perceived, 
the eternal love must be hidden. As the individual 
must be just before he can be truly generous, so must 
human society be based upon justice before it can be 
based on benevolence. 

This, and this alone, is what I contend for — that 
our social institutions be conformed to justice ; to 
those natural and eternal principles of right that are 
so obvious that no one can deny or dispute them — 
so obvious that by a law of the human mind even 
those who try to defend social injustice must invoke 
them. This, and this alone, I contend for — that 
he who makes should have ; that he who saves 
should enjoy. I ask in behalf of the poor nothing 
whatever that properly belongs to the rich. Instead 
of weakening and confusing the idea of property, I 
would surround it with stronger sanctions. Instead 
of lessening the incentive to the production of 
wealth, I would make it more powerful by making 
the reward more certain. Whatever any man has 
added to the general stock of wealth, or has re- 



124 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

ceived of the free will of him who did /produce it, 
let that be his as against all the world --his to use 
or to give, to do with it whatever he may please, so 
long as such use does not interfere with the equal 
freedom of others. For my part, I would put no 
limit on acquisition. No matter how many millions 
any man can get by methods which do not involve 
the robbery of others — they are his : let him have 
them. I would not even ask him for charity, or have 
it dinned into his ears that it is his duty to help the 
poor. That is his own affair. Let him do as he 
pleases with his own, without restriction and with- 
out suggestion. If he gets without taking from 
others, and uses without hurting others, what he 
does with his wealth is his own business and his own 
responsibility. 

I reverence the spirit that, in such cities as Lon- 
don and New York, organizes such great charities 
and gives to them such magnificent endowments, 
but that there is need for such charities proves to 
me that it is a slander upon Christ to call such cities 
Christian cities. I honor the Astors for having 
provided for New York the Astor Library, and 
Peter Cooper for having given it the Cooper Insti- 
tute ; but it is a shame and a disgrace to the people 
of New York that such things should be left to pri- 
vate beneficence. And he who struggles for that 
recognition of justice which, by securing to each his 
own, will make it needless to beg for alms from one 



FIEST PEmCIPLES. 125 

for another, is doing a greater and a higher work 
than he who buikls cliurches, or endows hospitals, 
or founds colleges and libraries. This justice, which 
would first secure to eacli his own earnings, is, it 
seems to me, of tliat higher than almsgiving, which 
the Apostle had in mind, when he said, ''''Though I 
bestow all viy goods to feed the poor, and though 1 
give tny hody to he hurned, and have not charity^ it 
prqfiteth me nothing.''^ 

Let us first ask what are the natural rights of men, 
and endeavor to secure them, before we propose 
either to beg or to pillage. 

In what succeeds I shall consider what are the 
natural rights of men, and how, under present 
social adjustments, they are ignored and denied. 
This is made necessary by the nature of this in- 
quiry. But I do not wish to call upon those my 
voice may reach to demand their own rights, so much 
as to call upon them to secure the rights of others 
more helpless. I believe that the idea of duty is 
more potent for social improvement than the idea of 
interest ; that in sympathy is a stronger social force 
than in selfishness. I believe that any great social 
improvement must spring from, and be animated 
by, that spirit which seeks to make life better, 
nobler, happier for others, rather than by that spirit 
which only seeks more enjoyment for itself For 
the Mammon of Injustice can always buy the selfish 



126 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

whenever it may think it worth while to paj 
enough ; but unselfishness it cannot buy. 

In the idea of the incarnation — of the God vol- 
untarily descending to the help of men, which is 
embodied not merely in Christianity, but in other 
great religions — lies, I sometimes think, a deeper 
truth than perhaps even the churches teach. This 
is certain, that the deliverers, the liberators, the 
advancers of humanity, have always been those who 
were moved by the sight of injustice and misery 
rather than those spurred by" their own suffering. 
As it was a Moses, learned in all the lore of the 
Egyptians, and free to the Court of Pharaoh, and 
not a tasked slave, forced to make bricks without 
straw, who led the Children of Israel from the 
House of Bondage ; as it was the Gracchi, of patri- 
cian blood and fortune, who struggled to the death 
against the land-grabbing system which finally de- 
stroyed Rome, as it must, should it go on, in time 
destroy this republic, so has it always been that 
the oppressed, the degraded, the downtrodden have 
been freed and elevated rather by the efforts and the 
sacrifices of those to whom fortune had been more 
kind than by their own strength. For the more 
fully men have been deprived of their natural rights, 
the less their power to regain them. The more men 
need help, the less can they help themselves. 

The sentiment to which I would appeal is not envy, 
nor yet self-interest, but that nobler sentiment which 
found strong, though rude, expression in that battle* 



FIEST PRINCIPLES. 127 

hymn wliicli rang througli the land wlien a great 
wrong was going down in blood : 

" In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea, 

"With a glory in His bosom to transfigure you and me. 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free ! " * 

And what is there for which life gives us oppor- 
tunity that can be compared with the effort to do 
what we may, be it ever so little, to improve social 
conditions and enable other lives to reach fuller, 
nobler development. Old John Brown, dying the 
death of the felon, launched into eternity with 
pinioned arms and the kiss of the slave child on his 
Kps — was not his a greater life and a grander death 
than though his year^ had been given to self-seeking? 
Did he not take with him more than the man who 
grabs for wealth and leaves his millions ? Envy the 
rich ! "Who that realizes that he must some day 
wake up in the beyond can envy those who spend 
their strength to gather what they cannot use here 
and cannot take away ? The onlj' thing certain to 
any of us is death. "Like the swallow darting 
through thy hall, such, O King, is the life of man ! " 
We come from where we know not ; we go — who 
shall say ? Impenetrable darkness behind, and 
gathering shades before. What, when our time 
comes, does it matter whether we have fared dain- 
tily or not, whether we have worn soft raiment or 
not, whether we leave a great fortune or nothing at 

* " Battle-Hymn of the Republic," by Julia Ward Howe 



128 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

all, whether we shall have reaped honors or been 
despised, have been counted learned or ignorant — as 
compared with how we may have nsed that talent 
which has been intrusted to us for the Master's 
service ? What shall it matter, when eyeballs glaze 
and ears grow dull, if out of the darkness may 
stretch a hand, and into the silence may come a 
voice : 

" Well done., thou good and faithful servant : 
thou hast heen faithful over a few things, I will 
make thee ruler over many things / enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord ! " 

I shall speak of rights, I shall speak of utility, I 
shall speak of interest ; I shall meet on their chosen 
ground those who say that the largest production of 
wealth is the greatest good, and material progress 
the highest aim. Nevertheless, I appreciate the 
truth embodied in these words of Mazzini to the 
working-classes of Italy, and would echo them : 

" Workingmen, brothers ! When Christ came and changed 
the face of the world, he spoke not of rights to the rich, 
who needed not to achieve them ; nor to the poor, who 
would doubtless have abused them, in imitation of the rich ; 
he spoke not of utility, nor of interest, to a people whom 
interest and utility had corrupted ; he spoke of duty, he 
spoke of love, of sacrifice and of faith ; and he said that 
they should be first among all who had contributed most by 
their labor to the good of all. 

" And the word of Christ breathed in the ear of a society 
in which all true life was extinct, recalled it to existence, 
conquered the millions, conquered the world, and caused 



FIEST PRINCIPLES. 129 

the education of the human race to ascend one degree on 
the scale of progress. 

" Workingmen ! We live in an epoch similar to that 
of Christ. We live in the midst of a society as corrupt as 
that of the Roman Empire, feeling in our inmost souls the 
need of reanimating and transforming it, and of uniting all 
its various members in one sole faith, beneath one sole law, 
in one sole aim — the free and progressive development of 
all the faculties of which God has given the germ to his 
creatures. We seek the kingdom of God on earth as it is in 
heaven, or, rather, that earth may become a preparation for 
heaven, and society an endeavor after the progressive reali- 
zation of the divine idea. 

" But Christ's every act was the visible representation of 
the faith he preached ; and around him stood apostles who 
incarnated in their actions the faith they had accepted. Be 
you such and you will conquer. Preach duty to the classes 
about you, and fulfill, as far as in you lies, your own. Preach 
virtue, sacrifice and love; and be yourselves virtuous, loving 
and ready for self-sacrifice. Speak your thoughts boldly, 
and make known your wants courageously; but without 
anger, without reaction, and without threats. The strongest 
menace, if indeed there be those for whom threats are 
necessary, will be the firmness, not the irritation, of your 
speech." 



CHAPTEE X. 

THE EIGHTS OF MAIN. 

There are those who, when it suits their purpose, 
say that there are no natural rights, but that all 
rights spring from the grant of the sovereign politi- 
cal power. It were waste of time to argue with 
such persons. There are some facts so obvious as to 
be beyond the necessity of argument. And one of 
these facts, attested by universal consciousness, is 
that there are rights as between man and man which 
existed before the formation of government, and 
which continue to exist in spite of the abuse of gov- 
ernment ; that there is a higher law than any hu- 
man law — to wit, the law of the Creator, impressed 
upon and revealed through nature, which is before 
and above human laws, and upon conformity to 
which all human laws must depend for their validity. 
To deny this is to assert that there is no standard 
whatever by which the rightfulness or wrongfulness 
of laws and institutions can be measured ; to assert- 
that there can be no actions in themselves right and 
none in themselves wrong ; to assert that an edict 
which commanded mothers to kill their children 
should receive the same respect as a law prohibiting 
infanticide. 

130 



THE EIGHTS OF MAN. 131 

These natural rights, this higher law, form the 
only true and sure basis for social organization. 
Jvist as, if we would construct a successful machine, 
we must conform to physical laws, such as the law 
of gravitation, the law of combustion, the law of 
expansion, etc.; just as, if we would maintain 
bodily health, we must conform to the laws of 
physiology ; so, if we would have a peaceful and 
healthful social state, we must conform our institu- 
tions to the great moral laws — laws to which we are 
absolutely subject, and which are as much above our 
control as are the laws of matter and of motion. 
And as, when we find that a machine will not work, 
we infer that in its construction some law of physics 
has been ignored or defied, so when we find social 
disease and political evils may we infer that in the 
organization of society moral law has been defied 
and the natural rights of man have been ignored. 

These natural rights of man are thus set forth 
in the American Declaration of Independence 
as the basis upon which alone legitimate govern- 
ment can rest : 

" We hold these truths to be self-evident — that all men 
are created equal ; "that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these 
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed ; that, 
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of 
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish 
it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations 



132 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, 
as shall seem to them most likely to affect their safety and 
happiness." 

So does the preamble to the Constitution of the 
United States appeal to the same principles : 

" We, the people of the United States, in order to form a 
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquil- 
lity, provide for the common defense, promote the gen- 
eral welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 
our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for 
the United States of America." 

And so, too, is the same fundamental and self- 
evident truth set forth in that grand Declaration of 
the Rights of Man and of Citizens, issued by the 
National Assembly of France in 1789 : 

"The representatives of the people of France, formed 
into a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect, 
or contempt of human rights are the sole causes of public misfor- 
tunes and corruptions of government, have resolved to set forth, 
in a solemn declaration, those natural, imprescriptible and 
inalienable rights," and do " recognize and declare, in the 
presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of His 
blessing and favor, the following sacred rights of men and 
of citizens : 

" I. Men are born and always continue free and equal in 
respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can 
only be founded on public utility. 

" II. The end of all political associations is the preserva- 
tion of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man, and 
these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of 
oppression." 

It is one thing to assert the eternal principles, as 
they are asserted in times of upheaval, when men 



THE EIGHTS OF MAN. 133 

of convictions and of the courage of their convic- 
tions come to the front, and another thing for a 
people just emerging from the night of ignorance 
and superstition, and enslaved by habits of thought 
formed by injustice and oppression, to adhere to and 
carry them out. The French people have not been 
true to these principles, nor yet, with far greater 
advantages, have we. And so, though the ancient 
regime, with its blasphemy of "right divine," its 
Bastile and its lettres de cachet, has been abolished 
in France ; there have come red terror and white 
terror. Anarchy masquerading as Freedom, and 
Imperialism deriving its sanction from universal 
suifrage, culminating in such a poor thing as the 
French Republic of to-day. And here, with our 
virgin soil, with our exemption from foreign com- 
plications, and our freedom from powerful and 
hostile neighbors, all we can show is another poor 
thing of a Republic, with its rings and its bosses, its 
railroad kings controlling sovereign states, its 
gangrene of corruption eating steadily toward the 
political heart, its tramps and its strikes, its ostenta- 
tion of ill-gotten wealth, its children toiling in 
factories, and its women working out their lives for 
bread ! 

It is possible for men to see the truth, and assert 
the truth, and to hear and repeat, again and again, 
formulas embodying the truth, without realizing all 
that that truth involves. Men who signed the 



134 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

Declaration of Independence, or applauded the 
Declaration of Independence, men who year after 
year read it, and heard it, and honored it, did so 
without thinking that the eternal principles of right 
which it invoked condemned the existence of negro 
slavery as well as the tyi-anny of George III. And 
many who, awakening to the fuller truth, asserted 
the unalienable rights of man against chattel slavery, 
did not see that these rights involved far more than 
the denial of property in human flesh and blood ; 
and as vainly imagined that they had fully asserted 
them when chattel slaves had been emancipated and 
given the suffrage, as their fathers vainly imagined 
they had fully asserted them, when they threw off 
allegiance to the English king and established here 
a democratic republic. 

The common belief of Americans of to-day is that 
among us the equal and unalienable rights of man 
are now all acknowledged, while as for poverty, 
crime, low wages, "over production," political cor- 
ruption, and so on, they are to be referred to the 
nature of things — that is to say, if any one presses 
for a more definite answer, they exist because it is 
the will of God, the Creator, that they should exist. 
Yet I believe that these evils are demonstrably due 
to our failure to fully acknowledge the equal and 
unalienable rights with which, as asserted as a self- 
eviden.t truth by the Declaration of Independence, 
all men have been endowed by God, their Creator. 



THE EIGHTS OF MAN. 135 

I believe tlie IS'ational Assembly of France were rigbt 
when, a century ago, inspired by tbe same spirit 
that gave us political freedom, they declared that 
the great cause of public misfortunes and corruptions 
of government is ignorance, neglect, or contempt cf 
human rights. And just as the famine which was 
then decimating France, the bankruptcy and cor- 
ruption of her Government, the brutish degrada- 
tion of her working classes, and the demoralization of 
her aristocracy, were directly traceable to the denial 
of the equal, natural and imprescriptible rights of 
men, so now the social and political problems which 
menace the American republic, in common with the 
whole civilized world, spring from the same cause. 
Let us consider the matter. The equal, natural 
and unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness, does it not involve the right of each to 
the free use of his powers in making a living for 
himself and his family, limited only by the equal 
right of all others ? Does it not require that each 
shall be free to make, to save and to enjoy what 
wealth he may, without interference with the equal 
rights of others ; that no one shall be compelled to 
give forced labor to another, or to yield up his earn- 
ings to another ; that no one shall be permitted to 
extort from another labor or earnings ? All this 
goes without the saying. Any recognition of the 
equal right to life and liberty which would deny 
the right to property — the right of a man to his 



136 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

labor and to the fall fruits of his labor, would be 
mockery. 

But that is just what we do. Our so-called recog- 
nition of the equal and natural rights of man is to 
large classes of our people nothing but a mockery, 
and as social pressure increases, is becoming a more 
bitter mockery to larger classes, because our institu- 
tions fail to secure the rights of men to their labor 
and the fruits of their labor. 

That this denial of a primary human right is the 
cause of poverty on the one side and of overgrown 
fortunes on the other, and of all the waste and 
demoralization and corruption that flow from the 
grossly unequal distribution of wealth, may be 
easily seen. 

As I am speaking of conditions general over the 
whole civilized world, let us first take the case of 
another country, for we can sometimes see the faults 
of our neighbors more clearly than our own, Eng- 
land, the country from which we derive our language 
and institutions, is behind us in the formal recog- 
nition of political liberty ; but there is as much 
industrial liberty there as here — and in some respects 
more, for England, though she has not yet i-eached 
free trade, has got rid of the " protective" swindle, 
which we still hug. And the English people — poor 
things — are, as a whole, satisfied of their freedom, 
and boast of it. They think, for it has been so long 
preached to them that most of them honestly believe 



THE EIGHTS OF MAJST. 137 

it, that Englishmen are the freest people in the world, 
and they sing ''Britons never shall be slaves," 
as though it were indeed true that slaves could 
not breathe British air. 

Let us take a man of the masses of this people — 
a "free-born Englishman," coming of long genera- 
tions of "free-born Englishmen," in Wiltshire or 
Devonshire or Somersetshire, on soil which, if you 
could trace his genealogy, you would find his 
fathers have been tilling from early Saxon times. 
He grows to manhood, we will not stop to inquire 
how, and, as is the natural order, he takes himself 
a wife. Here he stands, a man among his fellows, 
in a world in which the Creator has ordained that 
he should get a living by his labor. He has wants, 
and as, in the natural order, children come to him, 
he will have more ; but he has in brain and muscle 
the natural power to satisfy these wants from the 
storehouse of nature. He knows how to dig and 
plow, to sow and to reap, and there is the rich soil, 
ready now, as it was thousands of years ago, to give 
back wealth to labor. The rain falls and the sun 
shines, and as the planet circles around her orbit. 
Spring follows "Winter, and Summer succeeds 
Spring. It is this man's first and clearest right to 
earn his living, to transmute his labor into wealth, 
and to possess and enjoy that wealth for his own 
sustenance and benefit, and for the sustenance and 
benefit of those whom nature places in dependence 



138 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

on him. He has no right to demand any one 
else's earnings, nor has any one else a right to 
demand any portion of his earnings. He has 
no right to compel any one else to work for 
his benefit ; nor have others a right to demand 
that he shall work for their benefit. This 
right to himself, to the use of his own powers 
and the results of his own exertions, is a natural, 
self-evident right, which, as a matter of principle, 
no one can dispute, save upon the blasphemous 
contention that some men were created to work for 
other men. And this primary, natural right to his 
own labor, and to the fruits of his own labor, ac- 
corded, this man can abundantly provide for his 
own needs and for the needs of his family. His 
labor will, in the natural order, produce wealth, 
which, exchanged in accordance with mutual desires 
for wealth which others have produced, will supply 
his family with all the material comforts of life, and 
in the absence of serious accident, enable him to 
bring up his children, and lay by such a surplus 
that he and his wife may take their rest, and enjoy 
their sunset hour in the declining years when 
strength shall fail, without asking any one's alms 
or being beholden to any bounty save that of " Our 
Father which art in heaven." 

But what is the fact ? The fact is, that the right 
of this " free-born Englishman " to his own labor 
and the fruits of his labor is denied as fully and 



THE EIGHTS OF MAJS". 139 

completely as though he were made by law a slave ; 
that he is compelled to work for the enrichment of 
others as truly as though English law had made him 
the property of an owner. The law of the land does 
not declare that he is a slave : on the contrary, it 
formally declares that he is a free man — free to work 
for himself, and free to enjoy the fruits of his labor. 
But a man cannot labor without something to labor 
on, any more than he can eat without having some- 
thing to eat. It is not in human powers to make 
something out of nothing. This is not contemplated 
in the creative scheme. Nature tells us that if 
we will not work we must starve ; but at the same 
time supplies us with everything necessary to work. 
Food, clothing, shelter, all the articles that minister 
to desire and that we call wealth, can be produced 
by labor, but only when the raw material of which 
they must be composed is drawn from the land. 

To drop a man in the middle of the Atlantic 
Ocean and tell him he is at liberty to walk ashore, 
would not be more bitter irony than to place a man 
where all the land is appropriated as the property 
of other people and to tell him that he is a free 
man, at liberty to work for himself and to enjoy his 
own earnings. That is the situation in which our 
Englishman finds himself. He is just as free as he 
w^ould be were he suspended over a precipice while 
somebody else held a sharp knife to the rope ; just 
as free as if thirsting in a desert he found the only 



140 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

spring for miles walled and guarded by armed men 
who told him he could not drink unless ]ie freely 
contracted with them on their terms. Had this 
Englishman lived generations ago, in the time of 
his Saxon ancestors, he would, when he became of 
age, and had taken a wife, been allotted his house- 
plot and his seed-plot ; he would have had an 
equal share in the great fields which the villagers 
cultivated together, he would have been free to 
gather his fagots or take game in the common 
wood, or to graze his beasts on the common 
pasturage. Even a few generations ago, after the 
land-grabbing that began with the Tudors had gone 
on for some centuries, he would have found in yet 
existing commons some faint survival of the an- 
cient principle that this planet was intended for all 
men, not for some men. But now he finds every 
foot of land inclosed against him. The fields which 
his forefathers tilled, share and share alike, are the 
private property of " my lord," who rents it out to 
large farmers on terms so high that, to get ordi- 
nary interest on their capital, they must grind the 
faces of their laborers ; the ancient woodland is in- 
closed by a high wall, topped with broken glass, 
and is patroled by gamekeepers with loaded guns 
and the authority to take any intruder before the 
magistrate, who will send him to prison ; the old- 
time common has become " my lord's " great park, 
on which his fat cattle graze, and his supple-limbed 



THE EIGHTS OF MAN. 141 

deer daintily browse. Even the old footpaths that 
gave short cuts from road to road, through hazel- 
thicket and by tinkling brook, are now walled in. 

Yet tills ' ' free-born Englishman, " this Briton 
who never shall be a slave, cannot live without land. 
He must find some bit of the earth's surface on 
which he and his wife can rest, which they may call 
"home." But, save the high-roads, there is not as 
much of their native land as they may cover with 
the soles of their feet, that they can use without 
some other human creature's permission ; and on 
the high-road they would not be suffered to lie down, 
still less to make them a bower of leaves. So, to 
get living space in.hiis native land, our "tree-born 
Englishman " must consent to work so many days 
in the month for one of the "owners " of England, 
or, what amounts to the same thing, he must sell his 
labor, or the fruits of his labor, to some third party 
and pay the ' ' owner " of some particular part of the 
planet for the privilege of living on' the planet. 
Having thus sacrificed a part of his labor to get per- 
mission from another fellow-creature to live, if he 
can, our free-born Englishman must next go to work 
to procure food, clothing, etc. But as he cannot 
get to work without land to work on, he is com- 
pelled, instead of going to work for himself, to sell 
his labor to those who have land, on such terms as 
they please, and those terms are only enough to 
just support life in the most miserable fashion — that 



142 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

is to say, all the produce of his labor is taken from 
him, and he is given back out of it just what the 
hardest owner would be forced to give the slave — 
enough to support life on. He lives in a miserable 
hovel, with its broken floor on the bare ground, and 
an ill-kept thatch, through which the rain comes. 
He works from morning to night, and his wife must 
do the same ; and their children, as soon almost as 
they can walk, must also go to work, pulling weeds, 
or scaring away crows, or doing such like jobs for 
the landowner, who graciously lets them live and 
work on his land. Illness often comes, and death 
too often. Then there is no recourse but the parish 
or "My Lady Bountiful," the wife or daughter, or 
almoner of ' ' the God Almighty of the county-side, " 
as Tennyson calls him, — the owner (if not the 
maker) of the world in these parts, who doles out in 
insulting and degrading charity some little stint 
of the wealth appropriated from the labor of this 
family and of other such families. If he does not 
"order himself lowly and reverently to all his 
betters"; if he does not pull his poor hat off his 
sheepish head whenever "my lord " or " my lady," 
or "his honor," or any of their understrappers, go 
by ; if he does not bring up his children in the 
humility which these people think proper and be- 
coming in the "lower classes "; if there is suspicion 
that he may have helped himself to an apple or 
snared a hare, or slyly hooked a fish from the 



THE EIGHTS OF MAN. 143 

stream, this ' ' free-born Englisliman " loses charity 
and loses work. He must go on the parish or 
starve. He becomes bent and stiff before his time. 
His wife is old and worn, when she ought to be 
in her prime of strength and beauty. His girls — 
such as live — marry such as he, to lead such lives 
as their mother's, or, perhaps, are seduced by their 
"betters," and sent, with a few pounds, to a great 
town, to die in a few years in brothel, or hospital, 
or prison. His boys grow up ignorant and brutish ; 
they cannot support him when he grows old, even 
if they would, for they do not get back enough of 
the proceeds of their labor. The only refuge for 
the pair in their old age is the almshouse, where, 
for shame to let them starve on the roadside, these 
worked-out slaves are kept to die, — where the man 
is separated from the wife, and the old couple, over 
whom the parson of the church, by law established, 
has said, " Whom God hath joined together let no 
man put asunder," lead, apart from each other, a 
prison-like existence until death comes to their re- 
lief 

In what is the condition of such a "free-born 
Englishman" as this, better than that of a slave ? 
Yet if this is not a fair picture of the condition of 
the English agricultural laborers, it is only because 
I have not dwelt upon the darkest shades — the 
sodden ignorance and brutality, the low morality of 
these degraded and debased classes. In quantity 



144 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

and quality of food, in clothing and housing, in 
ease and recreation, and in morality, there can be 
no doubt that the average Southern slave was bet- 
ter off than the average agricultural laborer is in 
England to-day — that his life was healthier and 
happier and fuller. So long as a plump, well-kept, 
hearty negro was worth $1,000, no slave-owner, 
selfish or cold-blooded as he might be, would keep 
his negroes as great classes of ' ' free-born English- 
men "must live. But these white slaves have no 
money-value. It is not the labor, it is the land that 
commands the labor, that has a capitalized value. 
You can get the labor of men for from nine to 
twelve shillings a week — less than it would cost to 
keep a slave in good marketable condition, and of 
children for sixpence a week, and when they are 
worked out they can be left to die or "go on the 
parish." 

The negroes, some say, are an inferior race. But 
these white slaves of England are of the stock that 
has given England her scholars and her poets, her 
philosophers and statesmen, her merchants and in- 
ventors, who have formed the bulwark of the sea- 
girt isle, and have carried the meteor flag around the 
world. They are ignorant, and degraded, and de- 
based ; they live the life of slaves and die the death 
of paupers, simply because they are robbed of their 
natural rights. 



THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 145 

In the same neighborhood in which you may find 
such people as these^in which you may see squalid 
laborers' cottages where human beings huddle to- 
gether like swine, you may also see grand mansions 
set in great, velvety, oak-graced parks, the habita- 
tions of local " God Almighties," as the Laureate 
stylto them, and as these brutalized English people 
seem almost to take them to be. They never do any 
work — they pride themselves upon the fact that for 
hundreds of years their ancestors have never done 
any work ; they look with the utmost contempt not 
merely upon the man who works, but even upon the 
man wliose grandfather had to work. Yet they 
live in the utmost luxury. They have town houses 
and country houses, horses, carriages, liveried 
servants, yachts, packs of hounds ; they have all 
that wealth can command in the way of literature 
and education and the culture of travel. And they 
have wealth to spare, which they can invest in rail- 
way shares, or public debts, or in buying up land in 
the United States. But not an iota of this wealth 
do they produce. They get it because, it being con- 
ceded that they own the land, the people who do 
produce wealth, must hand their earnings over to 
them. 

Here, clear and plain, is the beginning and primary 

cause of that inequality in the distribution of wealth 

which, in England, produces such dire, soul-destro}'-- 

ing poverty, side by side with such wantonness of 

10 



146 SOCIAL PK0BLEM8. 

luxury, and whicli is to be seen in the cities eren 
more glaringly than in the country. Here, clear 
and plain, is the reason why labor seems a drug, 
and why, in all occupations in which mere laborers 
can engage, wages tend to the merest pittance on 
which life can be maintained. Deprived of their 
natural rights to land, treated as intruders upon 
God's earth, men are compelled to an unnatural 
competition for the privilege of mere animal exist- 
ence, that in manufacturing towns and city slums 
reduces humanity to a depth of misery and debase- 
ment in which beings, created in the image of God, 
sink below the level of the brutes. 

And the same inequality of conditions which 
we see beginning here, is it not due to the same 
primary cause ? American citizenship confers no 
right to American soil. The first and most essen- 
tial rights of man — the rights to life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness are denied here as com- 
pletely as in England. And the same results must 
follow. 



CHAPTER XI. 

DUMPING GARBAGE. 

This gulf-stream of humanity that is setting on 
our shores with increasing volume is in all respects 
worth J of more attention than we give it. In many 
ways one of the most important phenomena of our 
time, it is one which forcibly brings to the mind 
the fact that we are living under conditions which 
must soon begin to rapidly change. But there is 
one part of the immigration coming to us this year 
which is specially suggestive. A number of large 
steamers of the transatlantic lines are calling, under 
contract with the British Government, at small ports 
on the west coast of Ireland, filling up with men, 
women and children, whose passages are paid by 
their government, and then, ferrying them across 
the ocean, are dumping them on the whar\^es of 
New York and Boston with a few dollars apiece in 
their pockets to begin life in the New World. 

The strength of a nation is in its men. It is its 
people that make a country great and strong, pro- 
duce its wealth, and give it rank among other coun- 
tries. Yet, here is a civilized and Christian gov- 
ernment, or one that passes for such, shipping off 

147 



148 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

its people, to be dumped upon another continent, as 
garbage is shipped off from New York to be 
dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. Nor are these peo- 
ple undesirable material for the making of a nation. 
Whatever they may sometimes become here, when 
cooped up in tenement-houses and exposed to the 
corruption of our politics, and to the temptation of 
a life greatly differing from that to which they have 
been accustomed, they are in their own country, as 
any one who has been among them there can testify, 
a peaceable, industrious, and, in some important 
respects, a peculiarly moral people, who lack intel- 
lectual and political education, and the robust vir- 
tues that personal independence alone can give, 
simply because of the poverty to wliich they are 
condemned. Mr. Trevelyan, the Chief Secretary 
for Ireland, has declared in the House of Commons 
that they are physically and morally healthy, well 
capable of making a living, and yet the government 
of which he is a member is shipping them away at 
public expense as New York ships its garbage ! 

These people are well capable of making a living, 
Mr. Trevelyan says, yet if they remain at home 
they will only be able to make the poorest of poor 
livings in the best of times, and when seasons are 
not of the best, taxes must be raised and alms begged 
to keep them alive ; and so as the cheapest way of 
getting rid of them, they are shipped away at pub- 
lic expense. 



DUMPING GAEBAGE. 149 

What is the reason of this ? Why is it that peo- 
ple, in themselves well capable of making a living, 
cannot make a living for themselves in their own 
country? Simply that the natural, equal, and un- 
alienable rights of man, with which, as asserted by 
our Declaration of Independence, these human 
beings have been endowed by their Creator, are 
denied them. The famine, the pauperism, the mis- 
government and turbulence of Ireland, the bitter 
wrongs which keep aglow the fire of Irish 
"sedition," and the difficulties with regard to Ire- 
land which perplex English statesmen, all spring 
from what the National Assembly of France, in 1789, 
declared to be the cause of all public misfortunes 
and corruptions of government — the contempt of 
human rights. The Irish peasant is forced to starve, 
to beg, or to emigrate ; he becomes in the eyes of 
those who rule him mere human garbage, to be 
shipped off and dumped anywhere, because, like 
the English peasant, who, after a slave's life, dies 
a pauper's death, his natural rights in his native 
soil are denied him ; because his unalienable right 
to procure wealth by his own exertions and to re- 
tain it for his own uses is refused him. 

The country from which these people are shipped 
— and the Government-aided emigration is as noth- 
ing compared to the voluntary emigration — is abun- 
dantly capable of maintaining in comfort a very 
much larger population than it has ever had. 



150 SOCIAX, PROBLEMS. 

There is no natural reason why in it people them- 
selves capable of making a living should suffer 
want and starvation. The reason that they do is 
simply that they are denied natural opportunities for 
the employment of their labor, and that the laws 
permit others to extort from them the proceeds 
of such labor as they are permitted to do. Of 
these people who are now being sent across the 
Atlantic by the English government, and dumped 
on our wharves with a few dollars in their pockets, 
there are probably none of mature years who have 
not by their labor produced wealth enough not only 
to have supported them hitherto in a much higher 
degree of comfort than that in which they have 
lived, but to have enabled them to pay their own 
passage across the Atlantic, if they wanted to come, 
and to have given thom on landing here a capital 
sufficient for a comfortable start. They are penni- 
less only because they have been systematically 
robbed from the day of their birth to the day they 
left their native shores. 

A year ago I traveled through that part of Ire- 
land from which these Government-aided emigrants 
come. What surprises an American at first, even 
in Connaught, is the apparent sparseness of popula- 
tion, and he wonders if this can indeed be that over- 
populated Ireland of which he has heard so much. 
There is plenty of good land, but on it are only fat 
beasts, and sheep so clean and white that you at 



DUMPING GARBAGE. 151 

first think that they must be washed and combed 
every morning. Once this soil was tilled and was 
populous, but now you will find only traces of 
ruined hamlets, and here and there the miserable 
hut of a herd, who lives in a way no Terra del 
Fuegan could envy. For the "owners" of this 
land, who live in London and Paris, many of them 
never having seen their estates, find cattle more 
profitable than men, and so the men have been 
driven ofi'. It is only when you reach the bog 
and the rocks, in the mountains and by the sea- 
shore, that you find a dense population. Here they 
are crowded together on land on which Nature 
never intended men to live. It is too poor for 
grazing, so the people who have been driven from 
the better land are allowed to live upon it — as long 
as they pay their rent. If it were not too pathetic, 
the patches they call fields would make you laugh. 
Originally the surface of the ground must have been 
about as susceptible of cultivation as the surface of 
Broadway. But at the cost of enormous labor the 
small stones have been picked oif and piled up, 
though the great boulders remain, so that it is im- 
possible to use a plow ; and the surface of the bog 
has been cut away, and manured by sea-weed 
brought from the shore on the backs of men and 
women, till it can be made to grow something. 

For such patches of rock and bog — soil it could 
not be called, save by courtesy — which has been 



152 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

made to produce anytliing only by tlieir unremitting 
toil — these people are compelled to pay their absen- 
tee landlords rents varying from a pound to four 
pounds per acre, and then they must pay another 
rent for the seaweed, which the surf of the wild 
Atlantic throws upon the shore, before they are 
permitted to take it for manure, and another rent 
still for the bog from which they cut their turf As 
a matter of fact, these people have to pay more for 
the land than they can get out of the land. They are 
really forced to pay not merely for the use of the 
land and for the use of the ocean, but for the use of 
the air. Their rents are made up, and they man- 
age to live in good times, by the few shillings 
earned by the women, who knit socks as they carry 
their creels to and from the market or seashore ; by 
the earnings of the men, who go over to England 
every year to work as harvesters, or by remittances 
sent home by husbands or children who have man- 
aged to get to America. In spite of their painful 
industry the poverty of these people is appalling. 
In good times they just manage to keep above the 
starvation line. In bad times, when a blight strikes 
their potatoes, they must eat seaweed, or beg relief 
from the poor-rates, or from the charitable contri- 
butions of the world. When so rich as to have a 
few chickens or a pig, they no more think of eating 
them than Yanderbilt tliinks of eating his $50,000 
trotters. They are sold to help pay the rent. In 



DUMPING GAEBAGE. • 153 

the loiiglis you raay see fat salmon swimming in 
from the sea ; but, if every one of them were.marked 
by nature with the inscription, "Lord Soand-So, 
Londoa, with the compliments of God Almighty," 
they could not be more out of the reach of these 
people. The best shops to be found in the A'illages 
will have for sto(;k a few pounds of sugar and tea 
weighed out into ounce and half-ounce pajiers, a 
little Hour, two or three red petticoats, a little coarse 
cloth, a few yards of flannel, and a few of cotton, 
some buttons and thread, a little pig-tail tobacco, 
and, perhaps, r. bottle or two of " the native" hid 
away in the ground some distance from the cabin, 
so that if the ])oUce do capture it the sho]»keeper 
cannot he put in jail. For the Queen must live and 
the army must be supported, and the great distillers 
of Dublin and BelCast auvl Cork, who find such a 
comfortsible monojtolv in the excise, have churches 
to build and cathedrals to j-enovate. So poor are 
these people, f.o liltle is tliere in their miserable 
cabins, that a sub-sherilf who, last year, superin- 
tended the eviction of near one hundred f imilies in 
one place, declared that the effects of the whole 
lot were not worth £1]. 

But the landlords — ah! the landlords! — they 
live diiferently. J!]v<iry now and again in traveling 
through this courtr_y you come across some land- 
lord's palatial home mansion, its magnificent 
grounds inclosed with high walls. Pass inside 



154 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

these walls and it is almost like entering another 
world — wide stretches of rich velvety lawn, beds 
of bright flowers, noble avenues of arching trees, 
and" a spacious mansion rich with every appoint- 
ment of luxury, with its great stables, kennels, and 
appurtenances of every kind. But though they 
may have these luxurious home places, the large 
landlords, with few exceptions, live in London or 
Paris, or pass part of the year in the great cities 
and the rest in Switzerland or Italy or along the 
shores of the Mediterranean ; and occasionally one 
ot them takes a trip over here to see our new coun- 
try, with its magnificent opportunities for investing 
in wild lands which will soon be as valuable as En- 
glish or Irish estates. They do not have to work ; 
their incomes come without work on their part — all 
they have to do is to spend. Some collect galleries 
of the most valuable paintings, some are fanciers of 
old books, and give fabulous prices for rare editions. 
Some of them gamble, some keep studs of racers 
and costly yachts, and some get rid of their money 
in ways worse than these. Even their agents, 
whose business it is to extort the rent from the Irish- 
men who do work, live luxuriously. But it all 
comes out of the earnings of just such people as are 
now being dumped on our wharves — out of their 
earnings, or out of what is sent them by relatives 
in America, or by charitable contributions. 



DUMPING GARBAGE. 155 

It is to maintain such a system of robbery as this 
that Ireland is filled with policemen and troops and 
spies and informers, and a people who might be 
an integral part of the British nation are made to 
that nation a difiiculty, a weakness and a danger. 
Economically, the Irish landlords are of no more 
use than so many great, ravenous, destructive 
beasts — packs of wolves, herds of wild elephants, 
or such dragons as St. George is reported to have 
killed. They produce nothing ; they only consume 
and destroy. And what they destroy is more even 
than what they consume. For, not merely is Ire- 
land turned into a camp of military police and red- 
coated soldiery to hold down the people while they 
are robbed ; but the wealth producers, stripped of 
capital by this robbery of their earnings, and con- 
demned by it to poverty and ignorance, are unable 
to produce the wealth which they could and would 
produce did labor get its full earnings, and were 
wealth left to those who make it. Surely true states- 
manship would suggest that if any one is to be 
shoveled out of a country it should be those who 
merely consume and destroy ; not those who pro- 
duce wealth. 

But English statesmen think otherwise, and these 
sui-plus Irish men and women ; these garbage Irish 
men and women and little children — surplus and 
garbage because the landlords of Ireland have no 
use for them, are shoveled out of their own country 



156 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

and dumped on our wharves. They have reached 
"the land of the free and the home of the brave " 
just in time for the Fourth of July, when they may 
hear the Declaration of Independence, with its ring- 
ing assertion of unalienable rights, read again in 
our annual national celebration. 

Have they, then, escaped from the system which 
in their own country made them serfs and human 
garbage ? l^ot at all. They have not even escaped 
the power of their old landlords to take from them 
the proceeds of their toil. 

For we are not merely getting these surplus 
tenants of English, Scotch and Irish landlords — we 
are getting the landlords, too. Simultaneously 
with this emigration is going on a movement which 
is making the landlords and capitalists of Great 
Britain owners of vast tracts of American soil. 
There is even now scarcely a large landowning fam- 
ily in Great Britain that does not own even larger 
American estates, and American land is becoming 
with them a more and more favorite investment. 
These American estates of "their graces" and 
"my lords" are not as yet as valuable as their 
home estates, but the natural increase in our pop- 
ulation, augmented by emigration, will soon make 
them so. 

Every "surplus" Irishman, Englishman or 
Scotchman sent over here assists directly in sending 
up the value of land and the rent of land. The 



DUMPING GAJRBAGE. 157 

stimulation of emigration from the Old Country to 
this is a bright idea on the part of these landlords 
of two continents. They get rid of people who, at 
home, in hard times, they might have to support in 
some sort of fashion, and lessen, as they think, the 
forces of disaffection, while at the same time they 
augment the value of their American estates. 

It is not improbable that some of these evicted 
tenants may find themselves over here paying rent 
to the very same landlords to swell whose incomes 
they have so long toiled in their old country ; but 
whether this be so or not, their mere coming here, 
by its effect in increasing the demand for land, helps 
to enable those landlords to compel some others of 
the people of the United States to give up to them 
a portion of their earnings in return for the privilege 
of living upon American soil. It is merely with 
this view, and for this purpose, that the landlords 
of the Old World are buying so much land in the 
JSTew. They do not want it to live upon ; they 
prefer to live in London or Paris, as many of the 
privileged classes of America are now learning to 
prefer to live. They do not want to work it ; they 
do not propose to work at all. All they want with 
it is the power, which, as soon as our population in- 
creases a little, its ownership will give, of demand- 
ing the earnings of other people. And under pre- 
sent conditions it is a matter, not of a generation or 
two, but only of a few years, before they will be 



158 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

able to draw from their American estates sums even 
greater than from tneir Irish estates. That is to 
say, they will virtually own more Americans tnan 
they now own Irishmen. 

So far from these Irish immigrants having escaped 
from the system that has impoverished and pauper- 
ized the masses of the Irish people for the benefit of 
a few of their number, that system has really more 
unrestricted sway here than in Ireland. In spite of 
the fact that we read the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence every Fourth of July, make a great noise 
and have a great jubilation, that first of the unalien- 
able rights with which every man is endowed by his 
Creator — the equal right to the use of the natural 
elements without which wealth cannot be produced, 
nor even life maintained — is no better acknowl- 
edged with us than it is in Ireland. 

There is much said of "Irish landlordism," as 
though it were a peculiar kind of landlordism, or a 
peculiarly bad kind of landlordism. This is not so. 
Irish landlordism is in nothing worse than English 
landlordism, or Scotch landlordism, or American 
landlordism, nor are the Irish landlords harder than 
any similar class. Being generally men of educa- 
tion and culture, accustomed to an easy life, they 
are, as a whole, less grasping towards their tenants 
than the farmers who rent of them are to the 
laborers to whom they sublet. They regard the 
land as their own, that is all, and expect to get an 



DUMPING GARBAGE. 169 

income from it ; and the agent who sends them the 
best income they naturally regard as the best agent. 

Such popular Irish leaders as Mr. Parnell and 
Mr. Sullivan, when they come over here and make 
speeches, have a good deal to say about the "feudal 
landlordism" of Ireland. This is all humbug — an 
attempt to convey the impression that Irish land- 
lordism is something different from American land- 
lordism, so that American landowners will not take 
offense, while Irish landowners are denounced. 
There is in Ireland nothing that can be called feudal 
landlordism. All the power which the Irish land- 
lord has, all the tyranny which he exercises, springs 
from his ownership of the soil, from the legal recog- 
nition that it is his property. If landlordism in Ire- 
land seems more hateful than in England, it is only 
because the industrial organization is more primi- 
tive, and there are fewer intermediaries between the 
man who is robbed and the man who gets the plun- 
der. And if either Irish or English landlordism 
seems more hateful than the same system in America, 
it is only because this is a new country, not yet quite 
fenced in. But, as a matter of law, these "my 
lords" and "your graces," who are now getting 
themselves far greater estates in the United States 
than they have in their own country, have more 
power as landlords here than there. 

In Ireland, especially, the tendency of legislation 
for a series of years has been to restrain the power 



160 30CIAL PE0BLKM3. 

of the landlord in dealing with the tenant. In the 
United States he lias in all its fulhiess tlie unre- 
stricted power of doing as he ])loases with ]iis own. 
Rack-renting is with us the common, almost the ex- 
clusive, form of renting. There is no long process 
to be gone through with to secure an eviction, no 
serving notice upon tlie relieving officer of the dis- 
trict. The tenant whom the landlord wraits to get 
rid of can be evicted with the minimum of cost 
and expense. 

Says the Tribune's "Broadway Lounger" inci- 
dentally in his chatter: 

" Judge Gedney tells me that on the first of thin month 
he si^rned no less than two hundred and lifty warrants of 
dispossession against poor tenants. His district includes 
-many blocks of the most squalid variety of tenement- 
houses, and he has fully as mu(;h unpleasant work of this 
kind as any of his juditdal brethren. The first of May is, 
of course, the heaviest lield-day of the year for such busi- 
ness, but there are generally at the beginning of every 
month at least one hundred warrants granted. And to 
those who fret about the minor miseries of life, no more 
wholesome cure could be administered than an enforced 
attendance in a district court on such occasions. The low- 
est depths of misery are sounded. Judge Gedney says, too, 
that in the worst cases the suffering is more generally 
caused by misfortune than by idleness or dissipation. A 
man gets a felon on his liand, which keejis him at liome 
Tantil his savings are gone and all his effects are in the pawn- 
shop, and then his children fall sii^k or his wife dies, and 
the agent of the house, under instructions from t.ie owner 
who is perhaps in Europe enjoying himself, won't wait for 
the rent, and serves him with a summons." 

A while ago, when it was bitter cold, I read in 



DUMPING GARBAGE. 161 

the papers an item telling how, in the city of 
Wilkesbarre, Pa. , a woman and her three children 
were found one night huddled in a hogshead on a 
vacant lot, famished and almost frozen. The story- 
was a simple one. Tlie man, out of work, had 
tried to steal, and been sent to prison. Their rent 
unpaid, their landlord had evicted them, and as the 
only shelter they knew of, they had gone to the 
hogshead. In Ireland, bad as it is, the relieving- 
officer would have had to be by to have offered 
them at least the shelter of the almshouse. 

These Irish men and women who are being 
dumped on our wharves with two or three dollars 
in their pockets, do they find access to nature any 
freer here than there ? Far out in the West, if they 
know where to go, and can get there, they may, for 
a little while yet ; but though they may see even 
around New York plenty of unused land, they 
will find that it all belongs to somebody. Let 
them go to work at what they will, they must, here 
as there, give up some of their earnings for the 
privilege of working, and pay some other human 
creature for the privilege of living. On the whole 
their chances will be better here than there, for this 
is yet a new country, and a century ago our settle- 
ments only fringed the eastern seaboard of a vast 
continent. But from the Atlantic to the Pacific we 
already have our human garbage, the volume of 

which some of this Irish human garbage will cer- 
u 



162 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

tainly go to swell. "Wherever you go throughout 
the country the "tramp" is known; and in this 
metropolitan city there are already, it is stated by 
the Chanty Organization Society, a quarter of a 
million people who live on alms ! What, in a few 
years more, are we to do for a dumping-ground ? 
Will it make our difficulty the less that our human 
garbage can vote 2 



CHAPTER Xn. 

OVEK-PEODUCTION. 

That, as declared by the French Assem bly, public 
misfortunes and corruptions of government spring 
from ignorance, neglect or contempt of human 
rights, may be seen from whatever point we look. 

Consider this matter of " over-production " of 
which we hear so much — to which is so commonly 
attributed dullness of trade and the difficulty of 
finding employment- What, when we come to 
think of it, can be more preposterous than to 
speak in any general sense of over-production? 
Over-production of wealth when there is every- 
where a passionate struggle for more wealth ; 
when so many must stint and strain and contrive, to 
get a living ; when there is poverty and actual want 
among large classes ! Manifestly there cannot be 
over-production, in any general and absolute sense, 
until desires for wealth are all satisfied; until no 
one wants more wealth. 

Relative over-production, of course, there may be. 
The production of certain commodities may be so far 
in excess of the proper proportion to the production 
of other commodities that the whole quantity pro- 
duced cannot be exchanged for enough of those other 

168 



164 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

commodities to give tlie iisual returns to the labor 
and capital engaged in bringing them to market. 
But this relative over-production is merely dispro- 
portionate production. It may proceed from in- 
creased production of things of one kind, or from 
decreased production of things of other kinds. 

Thus, what we would call an over-production of 
watches — meaning not that more watches had been 
produced than were wanted, but that more had 
been produced than could be sold at a remuner- 
ative price — would be purely relative. It might 
arise from an increase in the production of watches, 
outrunning the ability to purchase watches ; or from a 
decrease in the production of other things, lessening 
the ability to purchase watches. E"o matter how 
much the production of watches were to increase, 
within the limits of the desire for watches, it would 
not be over-production, if at the same time the produc- 
tion of other things increased sufficiently to allow a 
proportionally increased quantity of other things to 
be given for the increased quantit}^ of watches. And 
no matter how much the production of watches 
might be decreased, there would be relative over- 
production, if at the same time the production of 
other things were decreased in such proportion as 
to diminish in greater degree the ability to give 
other things for watches. 

In short, desire continuing, the over-production 
of particular commodities can only be relative to 



OVER -PRODUCTION. 166 

the production of other commodities, and may result 
from unduly increased production in some branches 
of industry, or from the checking of production in 
other branches. But while the phenomena of over- 
production may thus arise from causes directly 
operating to increase production, or from causes 
directly operating to check production, just as the 
equipoise of a pair of scales may be disturbed 
by the addition or the removal of a weight, there 
are certain symptoms by which we may determine 
from which of these two kinds of causes any dis- 
turbance proceeds. For while to a limited extent, 
and in a limited field, these diverse causes may 
produce similar eifects, their general effects will be 
widely different. The increase of production in any 
branch of industry tends to the general increase of 
production ; the checking of production in any 
branch of industry tends to the general checking of 
production. 

This may be seen from the different general effects 
which follow increase or diminution of production 
in the same branch of industry. Let us suppose 
that from the discovery of new mines, the improve- 
ment of machinery, the breaking up of combina- 
tions that control it, or any other cause, tliere 
is a great and rapid increase in the production of 
coal, out of proportion to the increase of other pro- 
duction. In a free market the price of coal there- 
fore falls. The effect is to enable all consumers of 



166 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

coal to somewhat increase their consumption of coal, 
and to somewhat increase their consumption ol 
other things, and to stimulate production, by reduc- 
ing cost, in all those branches of industry into 
which the use of coal directly or indirectly enters. 
Thus the general effect is to increase production, 
and to beget a tendency to re-establish the equilib- 
rium between the production of coal and the pro- 
duction of other things, by raising the aggregate 
production. 

But let the coal operators and syndicates, as they 
frequently do, determine to stop or reduce the pro- 
duction of coal in order to raise prices. At once a 
large body of men engaged in producing coal find 
their power of purchasing cut off or decreased . Their 
demand for commodities they habitually use thus 
falls off ; demand and production in other branches 
of industr}' are lessened, and other consumers, in 
turTi, are obliged to decrease their demands. At the 
same time the enhancement in the price of coal 
tends to increase the cost of production in all 
branches of industry in which coal is used, and to 
diminish the amount both of coal and of other 
things which the users of coal can call for. Thus 
the check to production is perpetuated through all 
branches of industry, and when the re-establishment 
of equilibrium between the production of coal and 
the production of other things is effected, it is 
on a diminished scale of aggregate production. 



OVER-PKODTJCnON. 167 

All trade, it is to be remembered, is the exchange 
of commodities for commodities — money being 
merely the measure of values and the instrument 
for conveniently and economically effecting ex- 
changes. Demand (which is a different thing from 
desire, as it involves purchasing power) is the ask- 
ing for things in exchange for an equivalent value 
of other things. Supply is the offering of things 
in exchange for an equivalent value of other things. 
These terms are therefore relative ; demand involves 
supply, and supply involves demand. Whatever 
increases the quantity of things offered in exchange 
for other things at once increases supply and aug- 
ments demand. And, reversely, whatever checks 
the bringing of things to market at once reduces 
supply and decreases demand. 

Thus, while the same primary effect upon the re- 
lative supply of and demand for any particular com- 
modity or group of commodities may be caused 
either by augmentation of the supply of such 
commodities, or by reduction in the supply of 
other commodities — in the one case, the general 
effect will be to stimulate trade, by calling out 
greater supplies of other commodities, and increas- 
ing aggregate demand ; and in the other case, to 
depress trade, by lessening aggregate demasd and 
diminishing supply. The equation of supply and 
demand between agricultural productions and manu- 
factured goods might thus be altered in the same 



168 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

direction and to the same extent by such prosperous 
seasons or improvements in agriculture as would 
reduce the price of agricultural productions as 
compared with manufactured goods, or by such 
restrictions upon the production or exchange of 
manufactured goods as would raise their price as 
compared with agricultural productions. But in the 
one case, the aggregate produce of the community 
would be increased. There would not only be an 
increase of agricultural products, but the increased 
demand thus caused would stimulate the production 
of manufactured goods ; while this prosperity in 
manufacturing industries, by enabling those en- 
gaged in them to increase their demand for agricul- 
tural productions, would react upon agriculture. 
In the other case, the aggregate produce would be 
decreased. The increase in the price of manufac- 
tured goods would compel farmers to reduce their 
demands, and this would in turn reduce the ability 
of those engaged in manufacturing to demand farm 
products. Thus trade would slacken, and pro- 
duction be checked in all directions. That this is 
so, we may see from the different general effects 
which result from good crops and poor crops, 
though to an individual farmer high prices may com- 
pensate for a poor yield. 

To recapitulate : Relative over-production may 
proceed from causes which increase, or from causes _ 
which diminish, production. But increased produc- 



OVEE- PRODUCTION. 169 

tion in any branch of industry tends to increase 
production in all ; to stimulate trade and augment 
the general prosperity ; and any disturbance of 
equilibrium thus caused must be speedily read- 
justed. Diminished production in any branch of 
industry, on the other hand, tends to decrease 
production in all ; to depress trade, and lessen the 
general prosperity ; and depression thus produced 
tends to perpetuate itself through larger circles, 
as in one branch of industry after another the check 
to production reduces the power to demand the 
products of other branches of 'industry. 

Whoever will consider the widespread phenomena 
which are currently attributed to over-production 
can have no doubt from which of these two classes 
of causes thej spring. He will see that they are 
symptoms, not of the excess of production, but of 
the restriction and strangulation of production. 

There are with us many restrictions of production, 
direct and indirect ; for production, it must be re- 
membered, involves the transportation and ex- 
change as well as the making of things. And 
restrictions imposed upon commerce or any of its 
instruments may operate to discourage production 
as fully as restrictions imposed upon agriculture or 
manufactures. The tariff which we maintain for 
the express purpose of hampering our foreign com 
merce, and restricting the free exchange of our own 
productions for the productions of other nations, is 



ITO SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

in effect a restriction upon production. The monop 
olies which we have created or permitted to grow 
up, and which levy their toll upon internal com- 
merce, or by conspiracy and combination diminish 
supply, and artificially enhance prices, restrict pro- 
duction in the same way ; while the taxes levied 
upon certain manufactures by our internal revenue 
system directly restrict production.* 

So, too, is production discouraged by the direct 
taxes levied by our states, counties and municipali- 
ties, which in the aggregate exceed the taxation 
of the Federal government. These taxes are gener- 
ally levied upon all property, real and personal, at 
the same rate, and fall partly on land, which is not 

* Whether taxes upon liquor and tobacco can be defended upon 
other grounds is not here i-n question. What Adam Smith says upon 
this point may, however, be worth quoting; 

If we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, 
not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the wine coun- 
tries are in general the soberest people in Europe ; witness the Spaniards, 
the Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France. 
People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. Nobody 
affects the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse 
of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer. On the contrary, in the coun- 
tries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and 
where wine consequently is dear, and a rarity, drunkenness is a com- 
mon vice, as among the northern nations, and all those who live between 
the tropics— the negroes, for example, on the coast of Guinea. When a 
French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, 
where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in tlie southern, where it 
is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at 
first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of goed wine; but after 
a few months' residence, the greater part of them become as sober as 
the rest of the inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and 
the excises upon malt, beer, and ale, to be taken away all at once, it 
might, in the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general 
and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of 
people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and 
almost universal sobriety. At present, drunkenness is by no means the 
vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most 
expensive liquors. A gentleman drunk with ale has scarce ever been 
seen among us. The restraints upon the wine trade in Great Britain, 
besides, do not so much seem calculated to hinder the people from going, 
if I may say so, to the alehouse, as from going where they can buy the 
best and cheapest liquoi.— Wealth qf Nations, Book IV, Chap. III. 



OVEK-FEODUCTION. 171 

the result of production, and partly on things which 
are the result of production ; but insomuch as build- 
ings and improvements are not onlj thus taxed, but 
the land so built upon and improved is universally 
rated at a much higher assessment, and generally 
at a very much higher assessment, than unused 
land of the same quality,* even the taxation that falls 
upon land values largely operates as a deterrent to 
production. 

To produce, to improve, is thus fraught with a 
penalty. We, in fact, treat the man who produces 
wealth, or accumulates wealth, as though he had 
done something which public policy calls upon us to 
discourage. If a house is erected, or a steamship 
or a factory is built, down comes the tax-gatherer 
to fine the men who have done such things. If 
a farmer go upon vacant land, which is adding 
nothing to the wealth of the community, reclaim 
it, cultivate it, cover it with crops, or stock it with 
cattle, we not only make him pay for having thus 
increased wealth, but, as an additional discourage- 
ment to the doing of such things, we tax him very 
much more on the value of his land than we do the 
man who holds an equal piece idle. So, too, if 
a man saves, our taxes operate to punish him for 



*This arises from the widely spread but utterly false notion that 
property should only pay taxes in proportion to the income it yields. 
In Great Britain, this is carried to such a pitch of absurdity that unused 
land pays no taxes, no matter how valuable it may be. 



172 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

his thrift. Thus is production checked in every 
direction. 

But this is not all. There is with us a yet greater 
check to production. 

If there be in this universe superior intelligences 
engaged, with higher powers, in the study of its 
infinite marvels, who sometimes examine the 
speck we tenant with such studious curiosity as 
our microscopists watch the denizens of a drop 
of water, the manner in which, in such a coun- 
try as this, population is distributed, must greatr 
ly puzzle them. In our cities they find people 
packed together so closely that they live over 
one another in tiers; in the country they see 
people separated so widely that they lose all the 
advantages of neighborhood. They see build- 
ings going up in the outskirts of our towns, 
while much more available lots remain vacant. 
They see men going great distances to cultivate 
land while there is yet plenty of land to culti- 
vate in the localities from which they come and 
through which they pass. And as these higher 
intelligences watch this process of settlement 
through whatever sort of microscopes they may re- 
quire to observe such creatures as we, they must 
notice that, for the most part, these settlers, instead 
of being attracted by each other, leave between 
each other large patches of unused land. If there 
be in the universe any societies which have the 



OVER - PEODUOTION. 173 

same relation to us as our learned societies have to 
. ants and animalculse, these phenomena must lead to 
no end of curious theories. 

Take in imagination such a bird's-eje view of 
the city of New York as might be had from a 
balloon. The houses are climbing heavenward — 
ten, twelve, even fifteen stories, tier on tier of peo- 
ple, living, one family above another, without suf- 
ficient water, without sufficient light or air, without 
playground or breathing space. So close is the 
building that the streets look like narrow rifts in the 
brick and mortar, and from street to street the solid 
blocks stretch until they almost meet ; in the newer 
districts only a space of twenty feet, a mere crack in 
the masonry through which at high noon a sun- 
beam can scarcely struggle down, being left to 
separate the backs of the tenements fronting on one 
street from the backs of those fronting on another 
street. Yet, around this city, and within easy ac- 
cess of its center, there is plenty of vacant land ; 
within the city limits, in fact, not one-half the land 
is built upon ; and many blocks of tall tenement 
houses are surrounded by vacant lots. If the im- 
provement of our telescopes were to show us on 
another planet, lakes where the water, instead of 
presenting a level surface, ruffled only by the action 
of the wind, stood up here and there in huge 
columns, it could hardly perplex us more than 
these phenomena must perplex such extramundane 



174: SOCIAL PK0BLEM8. 

intelligences as I have supposed. How is it, tliey 
may well speculate, that the pressure of popula^ 
tion which piles families, tier on tier, above each 
other, and raises such towering warehouses and 
workshops, does not cover this vacant land with 
buildings and with homes? Some restraining 
cause there must be ; but what, it might well puzzle, 
them to tell. 

A South Sea Islander, however — one of the old 
heathen sort, whom, in civilizing, we have well-nigh 
exterminated, might make a guess. If one of their 
High Chiefs tabooed a place or object, no one of the 
common sort of these superstitious savages dare use 
or touch it. He must go around for miles rather 
than set his feet on a tabooed path ; must parch or 
die with thirst rather than drink of a tabooed 
spring ; must go hungry though the fruit of a 
tabooed grove rotted on the ground before his eyes. 
A South Sea Islander would say that this vacant 
land must be "taboo." And he would be not 
far from the truth. This land is vacant, simply be- 
cause it is cursed by that form of the taboo which 
we superstitiously venerate under the names of 
" private property " and "vested rights." 

The invisible barrier but for which buildings 
would rise and the city would spread, is the high 
price of land, a price that increases the more cer 
tainly it is seen that a growing population needs 
the land. Thus the stronger the incentive to the 



OVER - PRODUCTION. 175 

use of land, the higliar the barrier tliat arises against 
its use. Tenement hoT'ooS are built among vacant 
lots because the price that must be paid for land 
is so great that people who have not large means 
must economize their use of land by living one 
family above another. 

While in all of our cities the value of land, 
which increases not merely with their growth, but 
with the expectation of growth, thus operates to 
check building and improvement, its effect is mani- 
fested through the country in a somewhat different 
way. Instead of unduly crowding people together 
it unduly separates them. The expectation of 
profit from the rise in^tho value of land leads those 
who take up new land, not to content themselves 
with what they may most profitably use, but to get 
all the land they can, even though they must let 
a great part of it lio idle ; and large tracts are 
seized upon by those who make no pretense of 
using any part of it, but merely calculate to make a 
profit out of others who in time will be driven 
to use it. Thus population is scattered, not only to 
loss of all the comforts, refinements, pleasures and 
stimulations that come from neighborhood, but to 
the great loss of productive power. The extra 
cost of constructing and maintaining roads and rail- 
ways, the greater distances over which produce and 
goods must be transported, the difficulties which 
separation interposes to that commerce between men 



176 SOCIAL PE0BLEM8. 

which is necessary even to the ruder forms of 
modern production, all retard and lessen produc- 
tion. While just as the high value of land in and 
about a great city makes more difficult the erec- 
tion of buildings, so does increase in the value 
of agricultural land make improvement difficult. 
The higher the value of land the more capital does 
the farmer require if he buys outright ; or, if he 
buys on installments, or rents, the more of his 
earnings must he give up every year. Men who 
would eagerly improve and cultivate land could it be 
had for the using are thus turned away — to wander 
long distances and waste their means in looking for 
better opportunities ; to swell the ranks of those 
seeking for employment as wage workers ; to go 
back to the cities or manufacturing villages in the 
endeavor to make a living ; or to remain idle, 
frequently for long periods, and sometimes until 
they become utterly demoralized and worse than 
useless tramps. 

Thus is production checked in those vocations 
which form the foundation for all others. This 
check to the production of some forms of wealth 
lessens demand for other forms of wealth, and so the 
effect is propagated from one branch of industry to 
another, begetting the phenomena that are spoken of 
as over-production, but which are primarily due to 
restricted production. 

And as land values tend to rise, not merely with 



OVEE-PEODUCTION. 177 

the growth of population and wealth, but with the 
expectation of that growth, thus enlisting in push- 
ing on the upward movement, the powerful and 
illusive sentiment of hope, there is a constant 
tendency, especially strong in rapidly growing coun- 
tries, to carry up the price of land beyond the point 
at which labor and capital can profitably engage in 
production, and the only check to this is the refusal 
of labor and capital to so engage. This tendency 
becomes peculiarly strong in recurring periods, 
when the fever of speculation runs high, and leads 
at length to a correspondingly general and sudden 
check to production, which propagating itself (by 
checking demand) through all branches of industry, 
is the main cause of those paroxysms known as 
commercial or industrial depressions, and which are 
marked by wasting capital, idle labor, stocks of 
goods that cannot be sold without loss, and wide- 
spread want and suffering. It is true that other 
restrictions upon the free play of productive 
forces operate to promote, intensify and continue 
these dislocations of the industrial system, but that 
here is the main and primary cause I think there 
can be no doubt. 

And this, perhaps, is even more clear : That 
from whatever cause disturbance of industrial and 
commercial relations may originally come, these 
periodical depressions in which demand and supply 
seem unable to meet and satisfy each other could 
12 



178 SOCIAL PK0BLEM8. 

not become widespread and persistent did pro- 
ductive forces have free access to land. Nothing 
like general and protracted congestion of capital and 
labor could take place were this natural vent open. 
The moment symptoms of relative over-production 
manifested themselves in any derivative branch 
of industry, the turning of capital and labor toward 
those occupations which extract wealth from the 
soil would give relief 

Thus may we see that those public misfortunes 
which we speak of as "business stagnation " and 
"hard times," those public misfortunes that in 
periods of intensity cause more loss and sulFering 
than great wars, spring truly from our ignorance 
and contempt of human rights ; from our disregard 
of the equal and inalienable right of all men to 
freely apply to nature for the satisfaction of their 
needs, and to retain for their own uses the full fruits 
of their labor. 



CHAPTER Xni. 

TTNEMPLOYED LABOK. 

How contempt of human rights is the essential ele- 
ment in building up the great fortunes whose growth 
is such a marked feature of our development, we 
have already seen. And just as clearlj may we see 
that from the same cause spring poverty and pau- 
perism. The tramp is the complement of the 
millionaire. 

Consider this terrible phenomenon, the tramp — 
an appearance more menacing to the republic than 
that of hostile armies and fleets bent on destruc- 
tion. What is the tramp? In the beginning, he 
is a man able to work, and willing to work, for the 
satisfaction of his needs ; but who, not finding 
opportunity to work where he is, starts out in 
quest of it ; who, failing in this search, is, in a later 
stage, driven by those imperative needs to beg 
or to steal, and so, losing self-respect, loses all that 
animates and elevates and stimulates a man to 
struggle and to labor ; becomes a vagabond and an 
outcast — a poisonous pariah, avenging on society 
the wrong that he keenly, but vaguely, feels has 
been done him by society. 

Yet the tramp, known as he is now from the 

179 



180 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

Atlantic to the Pacific, is onl}^ a part of the phenom- 
enon. Behind him, though not obtrusive, save in 
what we call "hard times," there is, even in what 
we now consider normal times, a great mass of 
unemployed labor which is unable, unwilling, or 
not yet forced to tramp, but which bears to the 
tramp the same relation that the submerged part of 
an iceberg does to that much smaller part which 
shows above the surface. 

The difficulty which so many men who would 
gladly work to satisfy their needs find in obtaining 
opportunity of doing so, is so common as to oc- 
casion no surprise, nor, save when it becomes par- 
ticularly intensified, to arouse any inquiry. We are 
so used to it, that although we all know that work 
is in itself distasteful, and that there never yet was 
a human being who wanted work for the sake of 
work, we have got into tlie habit of thinking and 
talking as though work were in itself a boon. So 
deeply is this idea implanted in the common mind 
that we maintain a policy based on the notion that 
the more work we do for foreign nations and the 
less we allow them to do for us, the better off we shall 
be ; and in public and in private we hear men lauded 
and enterprises advocated because they "furnish 
employment" ; while there are many who, with more 
or less definiteness, hold the idea that labor-saving 
inventions have operated injuriously by lessening 
the amount of work to be done. 



UNEMPLOYED LABOK. 181 

Manifestly, work is not an end, but a means ; 
manifestly, there can be no real scarcity of work, 
which is but the means of satisfying material wants, 
until human wants are all satisfied. How, then, shall 
we explain the obvious facts which lead men to 
think and speak as though work were in itself desir- 
able? 

When we consider that labor is the producer of 
all wealth, the creator of all values, is it not strange 
that labor should experience difficulty in finding 
employment ? The exchange for commodities of that 
which gives value to all commodities, ought to be 
the most certain and easy of exchanges. One wish- 
ing to exchange labor for food or clothing, or any of 
the manifold things which labor produces, is like 
one wishing to exchange gold-dust for coin, cotton 
for cloth, or wheat for flour. Nay, this is hardly a 
parallel ; for, as the terms upon which the exchange 
of labor for commodities takes place are usually 
that the labor is first rendered, the man who offers 
labor in exchange generally proposes to produce 
and render value before value is returned to him. 

This being the case, why is not the competition 
of employers to obtain workmen as great as the 
competition of workmen to find employment? Why 
is it that we do not consider the man who does 
work as the obliging party, rather than the man 
who, as we say, furnishes work? 

So it necessarily would be, if in saying that labor 



182 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

is the producer of wealth, we stated the whole case. 
But labor is only the producer of wealth in the 
sense of being the active factor of production. For 
the production of wealth, labor must have access to 
pre-existing substance and natural forces, Man has 
no power to bring something out of nothing. He 
cannot create an atom of matter or initiate the 
slightest motion. Yast as are his powers of modi- 
fyiiig matter and utilizing force, they are merely 
powers of adapting, changing, re-combining, what 
previously exists. The substance of the hand with 
which I write these lines, as of the paper on which 
I write, has previously formed the substance of other 
men and other animals, of plants, soils, rocks, at- 
mospheres, probably of other worlds and other sys- 
tems. And so of the force which impels my pen. 
All we know of it is that it has acted and reacted 
through what seem to us eternal circlings, and ap- 
pears to reach this planet from the sun. The 
destruction of matter and motion, as the creation 
of matter and motion, are to us unthinkable. 

In the human being, in some mysterious way 
which neither the researches of physiologists nor the 
speculations of philosophers enable us to compre- 
hend, conscious, planning intelligence comes into 
control, for a limited time and to a limited extent, 
of the matter and motion contained in the human 
frame. The power of contracting and expanding 
human muscles is the initial force with which the 



"DNEMPLOYED LABOK. 183 

human mind acts upon the material world. By the 
use of this power other powers are utilized, and the 
forms and relations of matter are changed in ac- 
cordance with human desire. But how great soever 
be the power of aiFecting and using external nature 
which human intelligence thus obtains, — ^^and how 
great this may be we are only beginning now to re- 
alize, — it is still only the power of affecting and 
using what previously exists. "Without access to 
external nature, without the power of availing him- 
self of her substance and forces, man is not merely 
powerless to produce anything, he ceases to exist in 
the material world. He himself, in physical body 
at least, is but a changing form of matter, a passing 
mode of motion, that must be continually drawn 
from the reservoirs of external nature. 

Without either of the three elements, land, air 
and water, man could not exist ; but he is peculiarly 
a land animal, living on its surface, and drawing 
from it his supplies. Though he is able to navigate 
the ocean, and may some day be able to navigate 
the air, he can only do so by availing himself of 
materials drawn from land. Land is to him the 
great storehouse of materials and reservoir of forces 
upon which he must draw for his needs. And as 
wealth consists of materials and products of nature 
which have been secured, or modified by human ex- 
ertion so as to fit them for the satisfaction of human 



184 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

desires,* labor is the active factor in the production 
of wealth, but land is the passive factor, without 
which labor can neither produce nor exist. 

All this is so obvious that it may seem like wast- 
ing space to state it. Yet, in this obvious fact lies 
the explanation of that enigma that to so many 
seems a hopeless puzzle — the labor question. What 
is inexplicable, if we lose sight of man's absolute and 
constant dependence upon land, is clear when we 
recognize it. 

Let us suppose, as well as we can, human society 
in a world as near as possible like our own, with one 
essential diiference. Let us suppose this imaginary 
world and its inhabitants so constructed that men 
could support themselves in air, and could from the 
material of the air produce by their labor what they 
needed for nourishment and use. I do not mean to 
suppose a state of things in which men might float 
around like birds in the air or fishes in the ocean, 
supplying the prime necessities of animal life from 
what they could pick up. I am merely trying to 
suppose a state of things in which men as they are, 
were relieved of absolute dependence upon land for a 
standing place and reservoir of material and forces. 
We will suppose labor to be as necessary as with us, 
human desires to be as boundless as with us, the 



♦However great be its utility, nothing can be counted as wealth 
unless it requires labor for its production ; nor however much labor has 
been required for its production, can anything retain the character ot 
wealth longer than it can gratify desire. 



UNEMPLOYED LABOE. 185 

cumulative power of labor to give to capital as much 
advantage as with us, and the division of labor to 
have gone as far as with us — the only difference 
being (the idea of claiming tlie air as private prop- 
erty not having been thought of) that no human 
creature would be compelled to make terms with an- 
other in order to get a resting-place, and to obtain 
access to the materials and force without which 
labor cannot produce. In such a state of things, 
no matter how minute had become the division 
of labor, no matter how great had become the ac- 
cumulation of capital, or how far labor-saving in- 
ventions had been carried, — there could never be 
anything that seemed like an excess of the supply of 
labor over the demand for labor ; there could never 
beany difficulty in finding employment; and the 
spectacle of willing men, having in their own 
brains and muscles the power of supplying the needs 
of themselves and their families, yet compelled to 
beg for work or for alms, could never be witnessed. 
It being in the power of every one able to labor 
to apply his labor directly to the satisfaction of his 
needs without asking leave of any one else, that 
cut-throat competition, in which men who must find 
employment or starve are forced to bid against each 
other, could never arise. 

Yariations there might be in the demand for par- 
ticular commodities or services, which would pro- 
duce variations in the demand for labor in different 



186 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

occupations, and cause wages in those occupations 
to somewhat rise above or fall below the general 
level, but the ability of labor to employ itself, the 
freedom of indefinite expansion in the primary 
employments, would allow labor to accommodate 
itself to these variations, not merely without loss or 
suifering, but so easily that they would be scarcely 
noticed. For occupations shade into one another by 
imperceptible degrees, no matter how minute the 
division of labor — or, rather, the more minute the 
division of labor the more insensible the gradation 
— so that there are in each occupation enough who 
could easily pass to other occupations, to readily 
allow of such contractions and expansions as might 
in a state of freedom occur. The possibility of 
indefinite expansion in the primary occupations, the 
ability of every one to make a living by resort to 
them would produce elasticity throughout the whole 
industrial system. 

Under such conditions capital could not oppress 
labor. At present, in any dispute between capital 
and labor, capital enjoys the enormous advantage 
of being better able to wait. Capital wastes when 
not employed ; but labor starves. Where, however, 
labor could always employ itself, the disadvantage 
in any conflict would be on the side of capital, while 
that surplus of unemployed labor which enables 
capital to make such advantageous bargains with 
labor would not exist. The man who wanted to 



UNEMPLOYED LABOR. 18 Y 

get others to work for him would not find men 
crowding for employment, but, findmg all labor 
already employed, would have to offer higher wages, 
in order to tempt them into his employment, than 
the men he wanted could make for themselves. The 
competition would be that of employers to obtain 
workmen, rather than that of workmen to get 
employment, and thus the advantages which the 
accumulation of capital gives in the production of 
wealth would ( save enough to secure the accumula- 
tion and employment of capital) go ultimately to 
labor. In such a state of things, instead of think- 
ing that the man who employed another was doing 
him a favor, we would rather look upon the man 
who went to work for another as the obliging party. 
To suppose that under such conditions there could 
be such inequality in the distribution of wealth as 
we now see, would require a more violent presump- 
tion than we have made in supposing air, instead of 
land, to be the element from which wealth is chiefly 
derived. But supposing existing inequalities to be 
translated into such a state, it is evident that large 
fortunes could avail little, and continue but a short 
time. Wliere there is always labor seeking employ- 
ment on any terms ; where the masses earn only 
a bare living, and dismissal from employment 
means anxiety and privation, and even beggary or 
starvation, these large fortunes have monstrous 
power. But in a condition of things where there 



188 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

was no unemployed labor, where every one could 
make a living for himself and family without fear oi 
favor, what could a hundred or five hundred 
millions avail in the way of enabling its possessor 
to extort or tyrannize ? 

The upper millstone alone cannot grind. That it 
may do so, the nether millstone as well is needed. 
No amount of force will break an eggshell if exerted 
on one side alone. So capital could not squeeze 
labor as long as labor was free to natural oppor- 
tunities, and in a world where these natural 
materials and opportunities were as free to all as is 
the air to us, there could be no difficulty in finding 
employment, no willing hands conjoined with 
hungry stomachs, no tendency of wages toward 
the minimum on which the worker could barely 
live. In such a world we would no more think of 
thanking anybody for furnishing us employment 
than we here think of thanking anybody for furnish- 
ing us with appetites. 

That the Creator might have put us in the kind 
of world I have sought to imagine, as readily as in 
this kind of a world, I have no doubt. Why He has 
not done so may, however, I think, be seen. That 
kind of a world would be best for fools. This is 
the best for men who will use the intelligence with 
which they have been gifted. Of this, however, I 
shall speak hereafter. What I am now trying to do 
by asking my readers to endeavor to imagine a 



UKEMPLOTED LABOE. 189 

world in which natural opportunities were as " free 
as air," is to show that the barrier which prevents 
labor from freely using Jand is the nether millstone 
against which labor is gronnd, the true cause of the 
difficulties which are apparent through the whole 
industrial organization. 

But it may be said, as I have often heard it said, 
''We do not all want land ! We cannot all become 
farmers ! " 

To this I reply that we do all want land, though 
it may be in different ways and in varying degrees. 
Without land no human being can live; without 
land no human occupation can be carried on. Agri- 
culture is not the only use of land. It is only one 
of many. And just as the uppermost story of the 
tallest building rests upon land as truly as the 
lowest, so is the operative as truly a user of land as 
is the farmer. As all wealth is in the last analysis 
the resultant of land and labor, so is all production 
in the last analysis the expenditure of labor upon 
land. 

Nor is it true that we could not all become 
farmers. That is the one thing that we might all 
become. If all men were merchants, or tailors, or 
mechanics, all men would soon starve. But there 
have been, and still exist, societies in which all get 
their living directly from nature. The occupations 
that resort directly to nature are the primitive occu- 
pations, from which, as society progresses, all othera 



190 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

are differentiated. No matter how complex the 
industrial organization, these must always remain 
the fundamental occupations, upon which all other 
occupations rest, just as the upper stories of a build- 
ing rest upon the foundation. Kow, as ever, "the 
farmer feedeth all.-' And necessarily, the condition 
of labor in these first and widest of occupations, 
determines the general condition of labor, just as the 
level of the ocean determines the level of all its arms 
and bays and seas. Where there is a great demand 
for labor in agriculture, and wages are high, there 
must soon be a great demand for labor, and high 
wages, in all occupations. "Where it is difficult to 
get employment iu agriculture, and wages are low, 
there must soon be a difficulty of obtaining em- 
ployment, and low wages, in all occupations. Now, 
what determines the demand for labor and the rate 
of wages in agriculture is manifestly the ability of 
labor to employ itself — that is to say, the ease with 
which land can be obtained. This is the reason that 
in new countries, where land is easily had, wages, 
not merely in agriculture, but in all occupations, are 
higher than in older countries, where land is hard 
to get. And thus it is that, as the value of land in- 
creases, wages fall, and the difficulty in finding 
employment arises. 

This whoever will may see by merely looking 
around him. Clearly the difficulty of finding em- 
ployment, the fact that in all vocations, as a rule, 



UNEMPLOYED LABOR. 191 

the supply of labor seems to exceed the demand 
for labor, springs from difficulties that prevent labor 
finding emplojrtnent for itself — from the barriers 
that fence labor oif of land. That there is a surplus 
of labor in any one occupation arises from the diflS- 
culty of finding employment in other occupations, 
but for which the surplus would be immediately 
drained ofi". When there was a great demand for 
clerks no bookkeeper could suffer for want of em- 
ployment. And so on, down to the fundamental 
employments which directly extract wealth from 
land, the opening in which of opportunities for 
labor to employ itself would soon drain oif any 
surplus in derivative occupations. N^ot that every 
unemployed mechanic, or operative, or clerk, could 
or would get himself a farm ; but that from all the 
various occupations enough would betake themselves 
to the land to relieve any pressure for employment. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE EFFECTS OF MACHINEEY. 

How ignorance, neglect or contempt of human 
rights may turn public benefits into public misfor- 
tunes we maj clearly see if we trace the effect of 
labor-saving inventions. 

It is not altogether from a blind dislike of inno- 
vation that even the more thoughtful and intelligent 
Chinese set their faces against the introduction into 
their dense population of the labor-saving machi- 
nery of Western civilization. They recognize the 
superiority which in many things invention has 
given us, but to their view this superiority must 
ultimately be paid for with too high a price. The 
Eastern mind, in fact, regards the greater powers 
grasped by Western civilization somewhat as the 
mediaeval European mind regarded the powers which 
it believed might be gained by the Black Art, but 
for which the user must finally pay in destruction of 
body and damnation of soul. And there is much 
in the present aspects and tendencies of our civili- 
zation to confirm the Chinese in this view. 

It is clear that the inventions and discoveries 
which during this century have so enormously in- 
creased the power of producing wealth have not 

192 



THE EFFECTS OF MACHINEKT. 193 

proved an unmixed good. Their benefits are not 
merely unequally distributed, but they are bringing 
about absolutely injurious eiFects, They are concen- 
trating capital, and increasing the power of these 
concentrations to monopolize and oppress ; are ren- 
dering the workman more dependent ; depriving 
him of the advantages of skill and of opportunities 
to acquire it ; lessening his control over his own con- 
dition and his hope of improving it; cramping his 
mind, and in many cases distorting and enervating 
his body. 

It seems to me impossible to consider the present 
tendencies of our industrial development without 
feeling that if there be no escape from them, the 
Chinese philosophers are right, and that the powers 
we have called into our service must ultimately de- 
stroy us. We are reducing the cost of production ; 
but in doing so, are stunting children, and unfitting 
women for the duties of maternity, and degrading 
men into the position of mere feeders of machines. 
We are not lessening the fierceness of the struggle 
for existence. Though we work with an intensity 
and application that with the great majority of i^s 
leaves time and power for little else, we have in- 
creased, not decreased, the anxieties of life. Insan- 
ity is increasing, suicide is increasing, the disposi- 
tion to shun marriage is increasing. We are 
developing on the one side, enormous fortunes, 

but on the other side, utter pariahs. These ar© 
13 



194 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

symptoms of disease for which no gains can com- 
pensate. 

Yet it is manifestly wrong to attribute either 
necessary good or necessary evil to the improve- 
ments and inventions which are so changing indus- 
trial and social relations. They simply increase 
power — and power may work either good or evil as 
intelligence controls or fails to control it. 

Let us consider the effects of the introduction of 
labor-saving machinery — or rather, of all discoveries, 
inventions and improvements, that increase the 
produce a given amount of labor can obtain. 

In that primitive state in which the labor of each 
family supplies its wants, any invention or discovery 
which increases the power of supplying one of these 
wants will increase the power of supplying all, since 
the labor saved in one direction may be expended in 
other directions. 

When division of labor has taken place, and 
different parts in production are taken by different 
individuals, the gain obtained by any labor-saving 
improvement in one branch of production will, in 
like manner, be averaged with all. If, for instance, 
improvements be made in the weaving of cloth 
and the working of iron, the effect will be that 
a bushel of grain will exchange for more cloth and 
more iron, and thus the farmer will be enabled to 
obtain the same quantity of all the things he wants 
with less labor, or a somewhat greater quantity 



THE EFFECTS OF MACHINEKY. 195 

with the same labor. And so with all other 
producers. 

Even when the improvement is kept a secret, or 
the inventor is protected for a time by a patent, it is 
only in part that the benefit can be retained. It is 
the general characteristic of labor-saving improve- 
ments, after at least a certain stage in the arts is 
reached, that the production of larger quantities 
is necessary to secure the economy. And those 
who have the monopoly, are impelled by their 
desire for the largest profit to produce more at a 
lower price, rather than to produce the same 
quantity at the previous price, thus enabling the 
producers of other things to obtain for less labor 
the particular things in the production of which 
the saving has been effected, and thus diffusing 
part of the benefit, and generally the largest part, 
over the whole field of industry. 

In this way all labor-saving inventions tend to 
increase the productive power of all labor, and, 
except in so far as they are monopolized, their whole 
benefit is thus diffused. For, if in one occupation 
labor become more profitable than in others, labor 
is drawn to it until the net average in difierent occu- 
pations is restored. And so, where not artificially 
prevented, does the same tendency bring to a com- 
mon level the earnings of capital. The direct effect 
of improvements and inventions which add to 
productive power is, it is to be remarked, always to 



196 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

increase the earnings of labor, never to increase the 
earnings of capital. The advantage, even in such 
improvements as may seem primarily to be rather 
capital-saving than labor-saving — as, for instance, 
an invention which lessens the time required for the 
tanning of hides — becomes a property and advantage 
of labor. The reason is, not to go into a more 
elaborate explanation, that labor is the active factor 
in production. Capital is merely its tool and instru- 
ment. The great gains made by particular capital- 
ists in the utilization of improvements, are not 
the gains of capital, but generally the gains of 
monopoly, though sometimes tliey may be gains of 
adventure or of management. The rate of interest, 
which is the measure of the earnings of capital, has 
not increased with all the enormous labor-saving 
improvements of our century ; on the contrary, its 
tendency has been to diminish. But the re- 
quirement of larger amounts of capital, which is 
generally characteristic of labor-saving improve- 
ments, may increase the facility with which those 
who have large capitals can establish monopolies 
that enable them to intercept what would naturally 
go to labor. This, however, is an effect, rather 
than a cause, of the failure of labor to get the 
benefit of improvements in production. 

For the cause we must go further. While 
labor-saving improvements increase the power 
of labor, no improvement or invention can release 



THE EFFECTS OF MACHINEEY. 197 

labor from its dependence upon land. Labor- 
saving improvements only increase the power of 
producing wealth from land. And land being mo- 
nopolized as the private property of certain persons, 
who can thus prevent others from using it, all 
these gains, which accrue primarily to labor, can 
be demanded from labor by the owners of land, in 
higher rents and higher prices. Thus, as we see it, 
the march of improvement and invention has in- 
creased neither interest nor wages, but its general 
effect has evervwhere been to increase the value of 
land. Where increase of wages has been won, it 
has been by combination, or the concurrence of 
special causes; but what of the increased productive- 
ness which primarily attaches to labor has been 
thus secured by labor is comparatively trivial. 
Some part of it has gone to various other monopo- 
lies, but the great bulk has gone to the monopoly of 
the soil, has increased ground-rents and raised the 
value of land. 

The railroad, for instance, is a great labor-saving 
invention. It does not increase the quantity of 
grain which the farmer can raise, nor the quantity 
of goods which the manufacturer can turn out ; 
but by reducing the cost of transportation it in- 
creases the quantity of all the various things which 
can be obtained in exchange for produce of either 
kind ; which practically amounts to the same thing. 

These gains primarily accrue to labor ; that is to 



198 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

say, the advantage given by the railroad in the dis* 
trict which it aiFects, is to save labor ; to enable the 
same labor to procure more wealth. But as we see 
where railroads are built, it is not labor that secures 
the gain. The railroad being a monopoly — and in 
the United States, a practically unrestricted monop- 
oly — as large a portion as possible of these gains, 
over and above the fair returns on the capital in- 
vested, is intercepted by the managers, who by 
fictitious costs, watered stock, and in various other 
ways, thinly disguise their levies, and who gen- 
erally rob the stockholders while they fleece the 
public. The rest of the gain — the advantage which, 
after these deductions, accrues to labor, is inter- 
cepted by the monopolists of land. As the produc- 
tiveness of labor is increased, or even as there is a 
promise of its increase, so does the value of land 
increase, and labor, having to pay proportionately 
more for land, is shorn of all the benefit. Taught 
by experience, when a railroad opens a new district 
we do not expect wages to increase ; what we expect 
to increase is the value of land. 

The elevated railroads of New York are great 
labor-saving machines, which have greatly reduced 
the time and labor necessary to take people from 
one end of the city to the other. They have made 
accessible to the over-crowded population of the 
lower part of the island, the vacant spaces at the 
upper. But they have not added to the earnings of 



THE EFFECTS OF MACHINEE. J 99 

labor, nor made it easier for the mei- la'<>bfer to 
live. Some portion of the gain has been inter- 
cepted by Mr. Cyrus Field, Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, 
Mr. Jay Gould, and other managers and manipula- 
tors. Over and above this, the advantage has gone 
to the owners of land. The reduction in the time 
and cost of transportation has made much vacant 
land accessible to an overcrowded population, but 
as this land has been made accessible, so has its 
value risen, and the tenement-house population is 
as crowded as ever. The managers of the roads 
have gained some millions ; the owners of the land 
affected, some hundreds of millions ; but the work- 
ing classes of New York are no better off. What 
they gain in improved transportation they must 
pay in increased i^ent. 

And so would it be with any improvement or 
material benefaction. Supposing the very rich men 
of New York were to become suddenly imbued with 
that public spirit which shows itself in the Astor 
Library and the Cooper Institute, and that it should 
become among them a passion, leading them even 
to beggar themselves in the emulation to benefit 
their fellow citizens. Supposing such a man as 
Mr. Gould were to make the elevated roads free, 
were to assume the cost of the Fire Department, and 
give every house a free telephone connection ; and 
Mr. Yanderbilt, not to be outdone, were to assume 
the cost of putting down good pavements, and clean- 



200 SOCIAi PROBLEMS. 

ing the streets, and running the horse ears for noth- 
ing ; while the Astors were to build libraries in every 
ward. Supposing the fifty, twenty, ten, and still 
smaller millionaires, seized by the same passion, 
were singly or together, at their own cost, to bring 
in plentiftil supplies of water ; to furnish heat, light 
and power free of charge ; to improve and maintain 
the schools ; to open theaters and concerts to the 
public ; to establish public gardens and baths and 
markets ; to open stores where everything could be 
bought at retail for the lowest wholesale price ; — in 
short, were to do everything that could be done to 
make New York a cheap and pleasant place to live 
in? The result would be that New York being so 
much more desirable a place to live in, more 
people would desire to live in it, and the land 
owners could charge so much the more for the 
privilege. All these benefactions would increase rent. 
And so, whatever be the character of the improve- 
ment, its benefit, land being monopolized, must 
ultimately go to the owners of land. Were labor- 
saving invention carried so far that the necessity 
of labor in the production of wealth were done 
away with, the result would be that the owners 
of land could command all the wealth that could be 
produced, and need not share with labor even what 
is necessary for its maintenance. Were the powers 
and capacities of land increased, the gain would be 
that of landowners. Or were the improvement to 



THE EFFECTS OF MACHmERT. 201 

take place in the powers and capacities of labor, it 
would still be the owners of land, not laborers, who 
would reap the advantage. 

For land being indispensable to labor, those whc 
monopolize land are able to make their own terms 
with labor; or rather, the competition with each other 
of those who cannot employ themselves, yet must 
find employment or starve, will force wages down 
to the lowest point at which the habits of the labor 
ing class permit them to live and reproduce. At 
this point, in all countries where land is fully 
monopolized, the wages of common labor must rest, 
and toward it all other wages tend, being only kept 
up above it by the jspecial conditions, artificial or 
otherwise, which give labor in some occupations 
higher wages than in others. And so no improve- 
ment even in the power of labor itself — whether it 
come from education, from the actual increase of 
muscular force, or fi'om the ability to do with 
less sleep and work longer hours — could raise the 
reward of labor above this point. This we see in 
countries and in occupations where the labor of 
women and children is called in to aid the natural 
bread-winner in the support of the family. While 
as for any increase in economy and thrift, as soon as 
it became general it could only lessen, not increase, 
the reward of labor. 

This is the "iron law of wages," as it is styled 
by the Germans — the law which determinas wages 



802 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

to the minimum on which laborers will consent to 
live and reproduce. It is recognized by all econo- 
mists, though by most of them attributed to 
other causes than the true one. It is manifestly 
an inevitable result of making the land from which 
all must live the exclusive property of some. The 
lord of the soil is necessarily lord of the men 
who live upon it. They are as truly and as fully 
his slaves as though his ownership in their flesh 
and blood were acknowledged. Their competition 
with each other to obtain from him the means of 
livelihood must compel them to give up to him all 
their earnings save the necessary wages of slavery 
— to wit, enough to keep them in working condi- 
tion and maintain their numbers. And as no 
possible increase in the power of his labor, or 
reduction in his expenses of living, can benefit the 
slave, neither can it, where land is monopolized, 
benefit those who have nothing but their labor. It 
can only increase the value of land — the proportion 
of the produce that goes to the landowner. And 
this being the case, the greater employment of 
machinery, the greater division of labor, the greater 
contrasts in the distribution of wealth, become to 
the working masses positive evils — making their 
lot harder and more hopeless as material progress 
goes on. Even education adds but to the capacity 
for suffering. If the slave must continue to be a 
slave, it is cruelty to educate him. 



THE EFFECTS OF MACHINERY. 203 

All this we may not yet fully realize, because the 
industrial revolution which began with the intro- 
duction of steam, is as yet in its first stages, while 
up to this time the overrunning of a new 
continent has reduced social pressure, not merely 
here, but even in Europe. But the new continent 
is rapidly being fenced in, and the industrial revolu- 
tion goes on faster and faster. 



CHAPTER XV. 



SLAVEET AND SLAVERY. 



I MUST leave it to the reader to carry on in other 
directions, if he choose, such inquiries as those to 
which the last three chapters have been devoted.'* 
The more carefully he examines, the more fully will 
he see that at the root of ev^ery social problem lies 
a social wrong, that "ignorance, neglect or con- 
tempt of human rights are the causes of public mis- 
fortunes and corruptions of government," Yet, in 
truth, no elaborate examination is necessary. To 
understand why material progress does not benefit 
the masses requires but a recognition of the self- 
evident truth that man cannot live without land ; 
that it is only on land and from land that human 
labor can produce. 

Robinson Crusoe, as we all know, took Friday as 
his slave. Suppose, however, that instead of taking 
Friday as his slave, Robinson Crusoe had wel- 
comed him as a man and a brother ; had read him 
a Declaration of Independence, an Emancipation 
Proclamation and a Fifteenth Amendment, and 



* They are pursued in more regular and scientific form in my 
"Progress and Poverty," a book to which I must refer the reader for a 
more elaborate discussion of economic questions. 
20i 



SLAVERY AND SLAVERY. 205 

informed him that he was a free and independ- 
ent citizen, entitled to vote and hold office ; but 
had at the same time also informed him that that 
particular island was his (Robinson Crusoe's) pri- 
vate and exclusive property. What would have 
been the difference ? Since Friday could not flj up 
into the air nor swim off through the sea, since if he 
lived at all he must live on the island, he would 
have been in one case as much a slave as in the 
other. Crusoe's ownership of the island would be 
equivalent to his ownership of Friday. 

Chattel slavery is, in fact, merely the rude and 
primitive mode of propei'ty in man. It only grows 
np where population is sparse ; it never, save by 
virtue of special circumstances, continues where the 
pressure of population gives land a high value, for 
in that case the ownership of land gives all the 
power that comes from the ownership of men, in more 
convenient form. When in the course of history we 
see the conquerors making chattel slaves of the 
conquered, it is always where population is sparse 
and land of little value, or where they want to carry 
off their human spoil. In other cases, the conquerors 
merely appropriate the lands of the conquered, by 
which means they just as effectually, and much 
more conveniently, compel the conquered to work 
for them. It was not until the great estates of the 
rich patricians began to depopulate Italy that the 
importation of slaves began. In Turkey and 



206 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

Egypt, where chattel slavery is yet legal, it is con* 
fined to the inmates and attendants of harems. 
English ships carried negro slaves to America, and 
not to England or Ireland, because in America land 
was cheap and labor was valuable, while in western 
Europe land was valuable and labor was cheap. 
As soon as the possibility of expansion over new 
land ceased, chattel slavery would have died out in 
our Southern states. As it is, Southern planters do 
not regret the abolition of slavery. They get out 
of the freedmen as tenants as much as they got out 
of them as slaves. While as for praedial slavery — 
the attachment of serfs to the soil — -the form of 
chattel slavery which existed longest in Europe, it 
is only of use to the proprietor where there is 
little competition for land. Neither prgedial sla- 
very nor absolute chattel slavery could have added 
to the Irish landlord's virtual ownership of men — - 
to his power to make them work for him without 
return. Their own competition for the means of 
livelihood insured him all they possibly could give. 
To the English proprietor the ownership of slaves 
would be only a burden and a loss, when he can 
get laborers for less than it would cost to maintain 
them as slaves, and when they are become ill or in- 
firm can turn them on the parish. Or what would 
the New England manufacturer gain by the en- 
slavement of his operatives ? The competition with 
each other of so-called freemen, who are d©' 



SLAVERY AND SLAVERY. 207 

nied all right to the soil of what is called their 
country, brings him labor cheaper and more con- 
veniently than would chattel slavery. 

That a people can be enslaved just as effectually 
by making property of their lands as by making 
property of their bodies, is a truth that conquerors 
in all ages have recognized, and that, as society 
developed, the strong and unscrupulous who desired 
to live off the labor of others, have been prompt to 
see. The coarser form of slavery, in which each 
particular slave is the property of a particular owner, 
is only fitted for a rude state of society, and with 
social development entails more and more care, 
trouble and expense upon the owner. But by mak- 
ing property of the land instead of the person, much 
care, supervision and expense are saved the propri- 
etors ; and though no particular slave is owned by a 
particular master, yet the one class still appropri- 
ates the labor of the other class as before. 

That each particular slave should be owned by a 
particular master would in fact become, as social 
development went on, and industrial organization 
grew complex, a manifest disadvantage to the 
masters. They would be at the trouble of 
whipping, or otherwise compelling the slaves 
to work ; at the cost of watching them, and 
of keeping them when ill or unproductive ; at the 
trouble of finding work for them to do, or of hiring 
them out, as at different seasons or at different 



208 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

times, the number of slaves which diiferent owners 
or different contractors could advantageously employ 
would vary. As social development went on, these 
inconveniences might, were there no other way of 
obviating them, have led slaveowners to adopt some 
such device for the joint ownership and manage- 
ment of slaves, as the mutual convenience of capi- 
talists has led to in the management of capital. 
In a rude state of society, the man who wants to 
have money ready for use must hoard it, or, if he 
travels, carry it with him. The man who has capi- 
tal must use it himself or lend it. But mutual 
convenience has, as society developed, suggested 
methods of saving this trouble. The man who 
wishes to have his money accessible turns it over 
to a bank, which does not agree to keep or hand 
him back that particular money, but money to that 
amount. And so by turning over his capital to 
savings banks or trust companies, or by buying the 
stock or bonds of corporations, he gets rid of all 
trouble of handling and employing it. Had chat- 
tel slavery continued, some similar device for the 
ownership and management of slaves would in time 
have been adopted. But by changing the form of 
slavery — by freeing men and appropriating land — 
all the advantages of chattel slavery can be secured 
without any of the disadvantages which in a com- 
plex society attend the owning of a particular man 
by a particular master. 



I^LAVEET AND SLAVERY. 209 

Unable to employ themselves, the nominally free 
laborers are forced by their competition with each 
other to pay as rent all their earnings above a bare 
living, or to sell their labor for wages which give 
but a bare living, and as landowners the ex-slave- 
holders are enabled as before, to appropriate to 
themselves the labor or the produce of the labor of 
their former chattels, having in the value which this 
power of appropriating the proceeds of labor gives to 
the ownership of land, a capitalized value equiva- 
lent, or more than equivalent, to the value of their 
slaves. They no longer have to drive their 
slaves to work ; want and the fear of want do 
that more eifectualiy than the lash. They no 
longer have the trouble of looking out for their em- 
ployment or hiring out their labor, or the expense of 
keeping them when they cannot work. That is 
thrown upon the slaves. The tribute that they 
still wring from labor seems like voluntary pay- 
ment. In fact, they take it as their honest 
share of the rewards of production — since they 
furnish the land ! And they find so-called political 
economists, to say nothing of so-called preachers of 
Christianity, to tell them it is so. 

We of the United States take credit for having 

abolished slavery. Passing the question of how 

much credit the majority of us are entitled to 

for the abolition of negro slavery, it remains true 

that we have only abolished one form of slavery — 
14 



210 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

and that a primitive form which had been abolished 
in the greater portion of the country by social de- 
velopment, and that, notwithstanding its race char- 
acter gave it peculiar tenacity, would in time have 
been abolished in the same way in other parts of 
the country. We have not really abolished slavery ; 
we have retained it in its most insidious and 
widespread form — in a form which applies to 
whites as to blacks. So far from having abolished 
slavery, it is extending and intensifying, and we 
make no scruple of selling into it our own children 
— the citizens of the republic yet to be. For what 
else are we doing in selling the land on which future 
citizens must live, if they are to live at all ? 

The essence of slavery is the robbery of labor. 
It consists in compelling men to work, yet taking 
from them all the produce of their labor except 
what suffices for a bare living. Of how many of 
our "free and equal American citizens" is that 
already the lot ? And of how many more is it com- 
ing to be the lot ? 

In all our cities there are, even in good times, 
thousands and thousands of men who would gladly 
go to work for wages that would give them merely 
board and clothes — that is to say, who would gladly 
accept the wages of slaves. As I have previously 
stated, the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics 
and the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics both de- 
clare that in the majority of cases the earnings of 



SLAVERY AND SLAVERY. 211 

wage workers will not maintain their families, and 
must be pieced out by the earnings of women and 
children. In our richest states are to be found men 
reduced to a virtual peonage — living in their em- 
ployers' houses, trading at their stores, and for the 
most part unable to get out of their debt from one 
year's end to the other. In New York, sliiits are 
made for 35 cents a dozen, and women working 
from fourteen to sixteen hours a day average three 
dollars or four dollars a week. There are cities 
where the prices of such work are lower still. As 
a matter of dollars and cents, no master could afford 
to work slaves so hard and keep them so cheaply. 

But it may be said that the analogy between our 
industrial system and chattel slavery is only sup- 
ported by the consideration of extremes. Between 
those who get but a bare living and those who can 
live luxuriously on the earnings of others, are many 
gradations, and here lies the great middle class. 
Between all classes, moreover, a constant movement 
of individuals is going on. The millionaire's grand- 
children may be tramps, while even the poor man 
who has lost hope for himself may cherish it for 
his son. Moreover, it is not true that all the differ- 
ence between what labor fairly earns and what 
labor really gets goes to the owners of land. And 
with ns, in the United States, a great many of the 
owners of land are small owners — men who own 
the homesteads in which they live or the soil which 



212 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

they till, and who combine the characters of laborer 
and landowner. 

These objections will be best met by endeavoring 
to imagine a well developed society, like our own, 
in which chattel slavery exists without distinction 
of race. To do this requires some imagination, for 
we know of no such case. Chattel slavery had died 
out in Europe before modern civilization began, and 
in the New World has existed only as race slavery, 
and in communities of low industrial development. 

But if we do imagine slavery without race dis- 
tinction in a progressive community, we shall see that 
society, even if starting from a point where the greater 
part of the people were made the chattel slaves of 
the rest, could not long consist of but the two 
classes, masters and slaves. The indolence, inter- 
est and necessity of the masters would soon develop 
a class of intermediaries between the completely 
enslaved and themselves. To supervise the labor 
of the slaves, and to keep them in subjection, it 
would be necessary to take, from the ranks of the 
slaves, overseers, policemen, etc, , and to reward them 
by more of the produce of slave labor than goes to the 
ordinary slave. So, too, would it be necessary to 
draw out special skill and talent. And in the course 
of social development a class of traders would neces- 
sarily arise, who, exchanging the products of slave 
labor, would retain a considerable portion; and a 
class of contractors, who, hiring slave labor from the 



SLAVEKT AND SLAYEET. 213 

masters, would also retain a portion of its produce. 
Thus, between the slaves forced to work for a bare 
living and tlie masters who lived without work, 
intermediaries of various grades would be developed, 
some of whom would doubtless acquire large wealth. 
And in the mutations of fortune, some slave 
holders would be constantly falling into the class 
of intermediaries, and finally into the class of slaves, 
while individual slaves would be rising. The con- 
science, benevolence or gratitude of masters would 
lead them occasionally to manumit slaves; their 
interest would lead them to reward the diligence, 
inventiveness, fidelity to themselves, or treachery to 
their fellows, of particular slaves. Thus, as has 
often occurred in slave countries, we would find 
slaves who were free to make what they could on 
condition of paying so much to their masters every 
month or every quarter ; slaves who had partially 
bought their freedom, for a day or two days or three 
days in the week, or for certain months in the year, 
and those who had completely bought themselves, 
or had been presented with their freedom. And, as 
has always happened where slavery had not race char- 
acter, some of these ex-slaves or their children would, 
in the constant movement, be always working their 
way to the highest places, so that in such a state of 
society the apologists of things as the}'- are would tri- 
umphantly point to these examples, saying, ' ' See how 
beautiful a thing is slavery j Any slave can become a 



214 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

slaveholder himself if he is only faithful, industrious 
and prudent ! It is only their own ignorance and dissi- 
pation and laziness that prevent all slaves from 
becoming masters ! " And then they would indulge 
in a moan for human nature. "Alas ! " they would 
say, "the fault is not in slavery; it is in human 
nature " — meaning, of course, other human nature 
than their own. And if anyone hinted at the abolition 
of slavery, they would charge him with assailing the 
sacred rights of property, and of endeavoring to rob 
poor blind widow women of the slaves that were 
their sole dependence ; call him a crank and a com- 
munist ; an enemy of man and a defier of God ! 

Consider, furthermore, the operation of taxation 
in an advanced society based on chattel slavery ; 
the eifect of the establishment of monopolies of man- 
ufacture, trade and transportation ; of the creation 
of public debts, etc. , and you will see that in reality 
the social phenomena would be essentially the same 
if men were made property as they are under the 
system that makes land property. 

It must be remembered, however, that the slavery 
that results from the appropriation of land does not 
come suddenly, but insidiously and progressively. 
Where population is sparse and land of little value, 
the institution of private property in land may exist 
without its effects being much felt. As it becomes 
more and more difficult to get land, so will the vir- 
tual enslavement of the laboring classes go on. As 



SLAVERY AND SLAVERY. 215 

the value of land rises, more and more of the earn- 
ings of labor will be demanded for the use of land, 
until finally nothing is left to laborers but the wages 
of slavery — a bare living. 

But the degree as well as the manner in which 
individuals are affected by this movement must vary 
very much. Where the ownership of land has been 
much diffused, there will remain, for some time 
after the mere laborer has been reduced to the wages 
of slavery, a greater body of smaller landowners 
occupying an intermediate position, and who, accord- 
ing to the land they hold, and the relation which it 
bears to their labor, may, to make a comparison with 
chattel slavery, be compared, in their gradations, to 
the owners of a few slaves ; to those who own no 
slaves but are themselves free ; or to partial slaves, 
compelled to render service for one, two, three, four 
or five days in the week, but for the rest of the 
time their own masters. As land becomes more 
and more valuable this class will gradually pass into 
the ranks of the completely enslaved. The inde- 
pendent American farmer working with his own 
hands on his own land is doomed as certainly as 
two thousand years ago his prototype of Italy was 
doomed. He must disappear, with the develop- 
ment of the private ownership of land, as the Eng- 
lish yeoman has already disappeared. 

We have abolished negro slavery in the United 
States. But how small is the real benefit to the 



216 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

slave. George M. Jackson writes me from St. Louis, 
tinder date of August 15, 1883 : 

During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the 
Federal army, "When the war broke out, my father owned 
sixty slaves. I had not been back to my old Kentucky home 
for years until a short time ago, when I was met by one of my 
father's old negroes, who said to me : " Mas George, you say 
you sot us free ; but 'fore God, I'm wus off than when I be- 
longed to your father." The planters, on the other hand, are 
contented with the change. They say : " How foolish it was 
in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper now 
than when we owned the slaves." How do they get it 
cheaper? Why, in the shape of rents they take more of the 
labor of the negro than they could under slavery, for then 
they were compelled to return him sufficient food, clothing 
and medical attendance to keep him well, and were com- 
pelled by conscience and public opinion, as well as by law, 
to keep him when he could no longer work. Now their 
interest and responsibility cease when they have got all 
the work out of him they can. 

In one of his novels, Capt. Marryat tells of a 
Bchoolmaster who announced that he had aban- 
doned the use of the rod. When tender mothers, 
tempted by this announcement, brought their boys 
to his institution, he was eloquent in his denun- 
ciations of the barbarism of the rod ; but no 
sooner had the doors closed upon them than the 
luckless pupils found that the master had only 
abandoned the use of the rod for the use of the 
cane! Very much like this is our abolition of 
negro slavery. 

The only one of our prominent men who had any 
glimmering of what was really necessary to the 
abolition of slavery was Thaddeus Stevens, but it 



SLAVERY AND SLAVEKT. 217 

was only a glimmering. "Forty acres and a 
mule " would have been a measure of scant justice 
to the freedmen, and it would for awhile have giv^en 
them something of that personal independence 
which is necessary to freedom. Yet only for 
awhile. In the course of time, and as the pressure 
of population increased, the forty acres would, with 
the majority of them, have been mortgaged and the 
mule sold, and they would soon have been, as 
now, competitors for a foothold upon the earth and 
for the means of making a living from it. Such a 
measure would have given the freedmen a fairer 
start, and for many of them would have postponed 
the evil day ; but that is all. Land being private 
property, that evil day must come. 

I do not deny that the blacks of the South have 
in some things gained by the abolition of chattel 
slavery. I will not even insist that, on the whole, 
their material condition has not been improved. 
But it must be remembered that the South is yet 
but sparsely settled, and is behindhand in industrial 
development. The continued existence of slavery 
there was partly the effect and partly the cause 
of this. As population increases, as industry is 
developed, the condition of the freedmen must 
become harder and harder. As yet, land is com- 
paratively cheap in the South, and there is much 
not only unused but unclaimed. The consequence 
is, that the freedmen are not yet driven into that 



218 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

fierce competition which must come with densei 
population; there is no seeming surplus of labor 
seeking employment on any terms, as in the North. 
The freedmen merely get a living, as in the days of 
slavery, and in many cases not so good a living ; 
but still there is little or no difficulty in getting 
that. To fairly compare the new estate of the 
freedmen with the old, we must wait until in popu- 
lation and industrial development the South begins 
to approach the condition of the North. 

But not even in the North (nor, for that 
matter, even in Europe) has that form of slavery 
which necessarily results from the disinheritance of 
labor by the monopolization of land, yet reached its 
culmination. For the vast area of unoccupied land 
on this continent has prevented the full effects ot 
modern development from being felt. As it 
becomes more and more difficult to obtain land, so 
will the virtual enslavement of the laboring classes 
go on. As the value of land rises, more and 
more of the earnings of labor will be demanded 
for the use of land — that is to say, laborers must 
give a greater and greater portion of their time up 
to the service of the landlord, until, finally, no 
matter how hard they work, nothing is left them 
but a bare living. 

Of the two systems of slavery, I think there can 
be no doubt that upon the same moral level, that 
which makes property of persons is more humane 



SLAVEET AJSTD SLAVERY. 219 

than that which results from making private 
property of land. The cruelties which are per- 
petrated under the system of chattel slavery are 
more striking and arouse more indignation because 
they are the conscious acts of individuals. But for 
the suffering of the poor under the more refined 
system no one in particular seems responsible. 
That one human being should be deliberately 
burned by other human beings excites our imagina- 
tion and arouses our indignation much more than 
the great fire or railroad accident in which a hun- 
dred people are roasted alive. But this very fact 
permits cruelties that would not be tolerated under 
the one system to pass almost unnoticed under the 
other. Human beings are overworked, are starved, 
are robbed of all the light and sweetness of life, 
are condemned to ignorance and brutishness, and 
to the infection of physical and moral disease ; are 
driven to crime and suicide, not by other indi- 
viduals, but by iron necessities for which it seems 
that no one in particular is responsible. 

To match from the annals of chattel slavery the 
horrors that day after day trans]3ire unnoticed in the 
heart of Christian civilization it would be necessary 
to go back to ancient slavery, to the chronicles of 
Spanish conquest in the New World, or to stories of 
the Middle Passage. 

That chattel slavery is not the worst form of slavery 
we know from the fact that in countries where it has 



220 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

prevailed irrespective of race distinctions, the ranks 
of chattel slaves have been recruited from the ranks 
of the free poor, who, driven by distress, have sold 
themselves or their children. And I think no one 
who reads our daily papers can doubt that even 
already, in the United States, there are many who, 
did chattel slavery, without race distinction, exist 
among us, would gladly sell themselves or their 
children, and who would really make a good ex- 
change for their nominal freedom in doing so. 

We have not abolished slavery. We never can 
abolish slavery, until we honestly accept the funda- 
mental truth asserted by the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and secure to all the equal and unalien- 
able rights with which they are endowed by their 
Creator. IF we can not or will not do that, then, as 
a matter of humanity and social stability, it might 
be well, would it avail, to consider whether it were 
not wise to amend our constitution and permit poor 
whites and blacks alike to sell themselves and their 
children to good masters. If we must have slavery, 
it were better in the form in which the slave knows 
his owner, and the heart and conscience and pride 
of that owner can bo appealed to. Better breed 
children for the slaves of good, Christian, civilized 
people, than breed them for the brothel or the peni- 
tentiary. But alas ! that recourse is denied. Sup- 
posing we did legalize chattel slavery again, who 
would buy men when men can be hired so cheaply ? 



CHAPTER XYI. 

PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 

The more we examine, the more clearly may we 
see that public misfortunes and corruptions of gov- 
ernment do spring from neglect or contempt of the 
natural rights of man. 

That, in spite of tlie progress of civilization, 
Europe is to-day a vast camp, and the energies of 
the most advanced portion of mankind are every- 
where taxed so heavily to pay for preparations for war 
or the costs of war, is due to two great inventions, 
that of indirect taxation and that of public debt. 

Both of these devices by which tyrannies are 
maintained, governments are corrupted, and the 
common people plundered, spring historically from 
the monopolization of land, and both directly ignore 
the natural rights of man. Under the feudal 
system the greater part of public expenses was 
defrayed from the rent of land, and the landholders 
had to do the fighting or bear its cost. Had this 
system been continued, England, for instance, would 
to-day have had no public debt. And it is safe to 
say that her people and the world would have been 
saved those unnecessary and cruel wars in which in 
modern times English blood and treasure has been 

221 



222 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

wasted. But by the institution of indirect taxes 
and public debts tbe great landholders were enabled 
to throw off on the people at large the burdens 
which constituted the condition on which they held 
their lands, and to throw them off in such a way 
that those on whom they rested, though they might 
feel the pressure, could not tell from whence it 
came. Thus it was that the holding of land was 
insidiously changed from a trust into an individual 
possession, and the masses stripped of the first and 
most important of the rights of man. 

The institution of public debts, like the institu- 
tion of private property in land, rests upon the 
preposterous assumption that one generation may 
bind another generation. If a man were to come to 
me and say, ' ' Here is a promissory note which 
your great-grandfather gave to my great-grand- 
father, and which you will oblige me by paying," 
I would laugh at him, and tell him that if he wanted 
to collect his note he had better hunt up the man 
who made it ; that 1 had nothing to do with my 
great-grandfather's promises. And if he were to 
insist upon payment, and to call my attention to 
the terms of the bond in which my great-grand- 
father expressly stipulated with his great grand- 
father that I should pay him, I would only laugh 
the more, and be the more certain that he was a 
lunatic. To such a demand any one of us would 
reply in effect, ' ' My great-grandfather was evidently 



PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 223 

a knave or a joker, and your great-grandfather was 
certainly a fool, which quality you surely have 
inherited if you expect me to pay you money because 
my great-grandfather promised that I should do so. 
He might as well have given your great-grandfather 
a draft upon Adam or a check upon the First 
National Bank of the Moon. " 

Yet upon this assumption that ascendants may 
bind descendants, that one generation may legislate 
for another generation, rests the assumed validity 
of our land titles and public debts. 

If it were possible for the present to borrow of the 
future, for those now living to draw upon wealth to 
be created by those who are yet to come, there could 
be no more dangerous power, none more certain to 
be abused ; and none that would involve in its ex- 
ercise a more flagrant contempt for the natural and 
unalienable rights of man. But we have no such 
power, and there is no possible invention by which 
we can obtain it. When we talk about calling upon 
future generations to bear their part in the costs 
and burdens of the present, about imposing upon 
them a share in expenditures we take the liberty of 
assuming they will consider to have been made for 
their benefit as well as for ours, we are carrying 
metaphor into absurdity. Public debts are not a 
device for borrowing from the future, for compell- 
ing those yet to be to bear a share in expenses 
which a present generation may choose to incur. 



224 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

That is, of course, a physical impossibility. They 
are merely a device for obtaining control of wealth 
in the present by promising that a certain distribu- 
tion of wealth in the future shall be made — a device 
by which the owners of existing wealth are induced 
to give it up under promise, not merely that other 
people shall be taxed to pay them, but that other 
people's children shall be taxed for the benefit of 
their children or the children of their assigns. 
Those who get control of governments are thus en- 
abled to get sums which they could not get by im- 
mediate taxation without arousing the indignation 
and resistance of those who could make the most 
effective resistance. Thus tyrants are enabled to 
maintain themselves, and exirravagance and corrup- 
tion are fostered. If any cases can be pointed 
to in which the power to incur public debts has been 
in any way a benefit, they are as nothing compared 
with the cases in which the effects have been purely 
injurious. 

The public debts for which most can be said are 
those contracted for the purpose of making public 
improvements, yet what extravagance and corrup- 
tion the power of contracting such debts has engen- 
dered in the United States is too well known to 
require illustration, and has led, in a number of the 
States, to constitutional restrictions. Even the 
quasi public debts of railroad and other such cor- 
porations have similarly led to extravagance and 



PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 225 

corruption that have far outweighed any good re- 
sults accomplished through them. While as for the 
great national debts of the world, incurred as they 
have been for purposes of tyranny and war, it is im- 
possible to see in them anything but evih Of all 
these great national debts that of the United States 
will best bear examination ; but it is no exception. 
As I have before caid, the wealth expended in 
carrying on the war did not come from abroad or 
from the future, but from the existing wealth in the 
States under the national flag, and if, when we 
called on men to die for their country, we had not 
shrunk from taking, if necessary, nine hundred and 
ninety-nine thousand dollars from every millionaire, 
we need not have cveo^t/'d any debt. But instead of 
that, what taxation we did impose was so levied as to 
fall on the poor more heavily than on the rich, and 
to incidentally establish monopolies by which the 
rich could profit at the expense of the poor. And 
then, when more wealth still was needed, instead 
of taking it from those who had it, we told the rich 
that if they would voluntarily let the nation use 
some of their weahh we would make it profitable to 
them by guaranteeing the use of the taxing power 
to pay them back, principal and interest. And we 
did make it profitable with a vengeance. Not only 
did we, by the institution of the National Banking 
system, give them back nine-tenths of much of the 

money thus borrowed while continuing to pay in- 
15 



226 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

terest on the wliole amount, but even where it was 
required neither by the letter of the bond nor the 
equity of the circumstances we made debt incurred 
in depreciated greenbacks payable on its face in gold. 
The consequence of this method of carrying on the 
war was to make the rich richer instead of poorer. 
The era of monstrous fortunes in the United States 
dates from the war. 

But if this can be said of the debt of the United 
States, what shall be said of other national debts ! 

In paying interest upon their enormous national 
debt, what is it that the people of England are pay- 
ing? They are paying interest upon sums thrown 
or given away by profligate tyrants, and corrupt 
oligarchies in generations past — upon grants made to 
courtesans, and panders, and sycophants, and traitors 
to the liberties of their country ; upon sums bor- 
rowed to corrupt their own legislatures and wage 
wars both against their own liberties and the liber- 
ties of other peoples. For the Hessians hired and 
the Indians armed and the fleets and armies sent 
to crush the American colonies into submission, 
with the effect of splitting into two what might but 
for that have perhaps yet been one great confeder- 
ated nation ; for the cost of treading down the Irish 
people and inflicting wounds that yet rankle ; for 
the enormous sums spent in the endeavor to main- 
tain on the continent of Europe the blasphemy of 
divine right ; for expenditures made to carry rapine 



PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 227 

among unoffending peoples in the four quarters 
of the globe, Englishmen of to-day are taxed. 
It is not the case of asking a man to pay a debt con- 
tracted by his great-grandfather ; it is asking him to 
pay for the rope with which his great-grandfather 
was hanged, or the faggots with which he was 
burned. 

The so-called Egyptian debt which the power of 
England has recently been used to enforce is a still 
more flagrant instance of spoliation. The late 
Khedive was no more than an Arab robber, living at 
free quartern in the country and plundering its peo- 
ple. All he could get by stripping them to starva- 
tion and nakedness not satisfying his insensate and 
barbarian profligacy, European money-lenders, re- 
lying upon the assumed sanctity of national debts, 
oftered him money on the most usurious terms. The 
money was spent with the wildest recklessness, upon 
harems, palaces, yachts, diamonds, presents and 
entertainments ; yet to extort interest upon it from 
poverty-stricken fellahs, Christian England sends 
fleets and armies to murder and burn, and with her 
power maintains the tyranny and luxury of a khe- 
dival puppet at the expense of the Egyptian peoj^le. 

Thus the device of public debts enables tyrants to 
entrench themselves, and adventurers who seize upon 
government to defy the people. It permits the mak- 
ing of great and wasteful expenditures, by silencing, 
and even converting into support, the opposition of 



228 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

those who would otherwise resist these expenditures 
with most energj and force. But for tlie ability of 
rulers to contract public debts, nine-tenths of the 
wars of Christendom for the past two centuries could 
never have been waged. The destruction of wealth 
and the shedding of blood, the agony of wives and 
mothers and children thus caused, cannot be com- 
puted, but to these items must be added the waste 
and loss and demoralization caused by constant 
preparation for war. 

Nor do the public misfortunes and corruptions of 
government which arise from the ignorance and con- 
tempt of human rights involved in the recognition 
of public debts, end with the costs of war and war- 
like preparation, and the corruptions which such 
vast public expenditures foster. The passions ar- 
roused by war, the national hatreds, the worship 
of military glory, the thirst for victory or revenge, 
dull public conscience, pervert the best social in- 
stincts into that low, unreasoning extension of sel- 
fishness miscalled patriotism ; deaden the love of 
liberty; lead men to submit to tyranny and usurpa- 
tion from the savage thirst for cutting the throats of 
other people, or the fear of having their own throats 
cut. They so pervert religious perceptions that pro- 
fessed followers of Christ bless in his name the 
standards of murder and rapine, and thanks are 
given to the Prince of Peace for victories that pile 



PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 229 

the earth with mangled corpses, and make hearth- 
stones desolate ! 

Nor yet does the evil end here. "William H, 
"Vanderbilt, with his forty millions of registered 
bonds, declares that the national debt ought not to 
be paid off; that, on the contrary, it ought to be in- 
creased, because it gives stability to the government, 
"every man who gets a bond becoming a loyal and 
loving citizen.'- * Mr. Yanderbilt expresses the uni- 
versal feeling of his kind. It was not loyal and lov- 
ing citizens with bonds in their pockets who rushed 
to the front in our civil war, or who rush to the 
front in any war, but the possession of a bond does 
tend to make a man loyal and loving to whoever 
may grasp the machinery of government, and will 
continue to cash coupons, A great public debt cre- 
ates a great moneyed interest that wants "strong 
government" and fears change, and thus forms a 
powerful element on which corrupt and tyrannous 
government can always rely as against the people. 
We may see already in the United States the de- 
moralization of this influence ; while in Europe, 
where it has had more striking manifestations, it is 
the mainstay of tyranny, and the strongest obstacle 
to political reform. 

Thomas Jefferson was right, when as a deduction 
from "the self evident truth that the land belongs 
in usufruct to the living, " he declared that one gen- 

* Interview in New York Times. 



230 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

eration should not hold itself bound by the laws or 
the debts of its predecessors, and as this widest- 
minded of American patriots and greatest of Amer- 
ican statesmen said, measures which would give 
practical effect to this principle will appear the more 
salutary the more they are considered. 

Indirect taxation, the other device by which the 
people are bled without feeling it, and those who could 
make the most effective resistance to extravagance 
and corruption are bribed into acquiescence, is an 
invention whereby taxes are so levied that those 
who directly pay are enabled to collect them again 
from others, and generally to collect them with a 
profit, in higher prices. Those who directly pay 
the taxes and, still more important, those who desire 
high prices, are thus interested in the imposition and 
maintenance of taxation, while those on whom the 
burden ultimately falls do not realize it. 

The corrupting effects of indirect taxation are 
obvious wherever it has been resorted to, but 
nowhere more obvious than in the United States. 
Ever since the war the great effort of our national 
government has not been to reduce taxation, but to 
find excuses for maintaining war taxation. The 
most corrupting extravagance in every department 
of administration has thus been fostered, and every 
endeavor used to increase expense. We have de- 
liberately substituted a costly currency for a cheap 
currency ; we have deliberately added to the cost of 



PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIEECT TAXATION. 231 

paying off the public debt ; we maintain a costly 
navy for which we have no sort of use, and which, 
in case of war, would be of no sort of use to us ; and 
an army twelve times as large and iifteen times as ex- 
pensive as we need. We are digging silver out of 
certain holes in the ground in Nevada and Colo- 
rado and poking it down other holes in the ground 
in Washington, Kew York and San Francisco. We 
are spending great sums in useless "public im- 
provements," and are paying pensions under a law 
which seems framed but to put a premium upon 
fraud and get away with public money. And yet 
the great question before Congress is what to do 
with the surplus. Any proposition to reduce taxa- 
tion arouses the most bitter opposition fi'om those 
who profit or who imagine they profit from the im- 
position of this taxation, and a clamorous lobby sur- 
rounds Congress, begging, bullying, bribing, log- 
rolling against the reduction of taxation, each 
interest protesting and insisting that whatever tax 
is reduced, its own pet tax must be left intact. This 
clamor of special interests for the continuance of 
indirect taxation may give us some idea of how 
much greater are the sums these taxes take from the 
people than those they put in the treasury. But it 
is only a faint idea, for besides what goes to the 
government and what is intercepted by private 
interests, there is the loss and waste caused by 
the artificial restrictions and difficulties which this 



232 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

system of indirect taxation places in the way oi' pro. 
duction and exchange, and which unquestionably 
amount to far more than the other two items. 

The cost of this system that can be measured in 
money is, however, of little moment as compared 
wi:h its effect in corrupting government, in debas- 
ing public morals and befogging the thought of the 
people. The first thing every man is called upon 
to do when he reaches this "land of liberty" is to 
take a false oath ; the next thing he is called upon 
to do is to bribe a Custom House officer. And so 
on, through every artery of the body politic and 
every fiber of the public mind, runs the poisonous 
virus. Law is brought into contempt by the mak- 
ing of actions that are not crimes in morals crimes 
in law ; the unscrupulous are given an advantage 
over the scrupulous ; voters are bought, officials 
are corrupted, the press is debauched ; and the per- 
sistent advocacy of these selfish interests has so 
far beclouded popular thought that a very large 
number — I am inclined to think a very large ma- 
jority — of the American people actually believe that 
they are benefited by being thus taxed ! 

To recount in detail the public misfortunes and 
corruptions of government which arise from this 
vicious system of taxation would take more space 
than I can here devote to the subject. But what I 
wish specially to point out is, that, like the evils 
arising from public debts, they are in the last analy- 



PUBLIC DEBTS AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 233 

sis due to "ignorance, neglect or contempt of 
human rights." While every citizen may properly 
be called upon to bear his fair share in all proper 
expenses of government, it is manifestly an infringe- 
ment of natural rights to use the taxing power so as 
to give one citizen an advantage over another, to 
take from some the proceeds of their labor in order 
to swell the profit of others, and to punish as crimes 
actions which in themselves are not injurious. 



CHAPTEE XYII. 

THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 

To prevent government from becoming corrupt 
and tyrannous, its organization and methods should 
be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted 
to those necessary to the common welfare, and in 
all its parts it should be kept as close to the people 
and as directly within their control as may be. 

We have ignored these principles in many ways, 
and the result has been corruption and demoraliza- 
tion, the loss of control by the people, and the 
wresting of government to the advantage of the few 
and the spoliation of the many. The line of reform, 
on one side at least, lies in simplification. 

The first and main purpose of government is 
admirably stated in that grand document which we 
Americans so honor and so ignore — the Declara- 
tion of Independence. It is to secure to men those 
equal and unalienable rights with which the Creator 
has endowed them. I shall hereafter show how the 
adoption of the only means by which, in civilized 
and progressive society, the first of these unalien- 
able rights — the equal right to land — can be 
secured, will at the same time greatly simplify 
government and do away with corrupting influences. 

284 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVEENMENT. 235 

And beyond this, much simplification is possible, 
and should be sought wherever it can be attained 
As political corruption makes it easier to resist the 
demand for reform, whatever may be done to purify 
politics and bring government within the intelligent 
supervision and control of the people is not merely 
in itself an end to be sought, but a means to larger 
ends. 

The American Republic has no more need for its 
burlesque of a navy than a peaceable giant would 
have for a stuffed club or a tin sword. It is only 
maintained for the sake of the officers and the naval 
rings. In peace it is a source of expense and cor- 
ruption ; in war it would be useless. We are too 
strong for any foreign power to wantonly attack, we 
ought to be too great to wantonly attack others. If 
war should ever be forced upon us, we could safely 
rely upon science and invention, which are already 
superseding navies faster than they can be built. 

So with our army. All we need, if we even now 
need that, is a small force of frontier police, such as 
is maintained in Australia and Canada. Standing 
uavies and standing armies are inimical to the 
genius of democracy, and it ought to be our pride, 
as it is our duty, to show the world that a great 
republic can dispense with both. And in organiza- 
tion, as in principle, both our navy and our army are 
repugnant to the democratic idea. In both we 
maintain that distinction between commissioned 



236 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

officers and common soldiers and sailors which 
arose in Europe when the nobilitj^ who furnished 
the one were considered a superior race to the 
serfs and peasants who supplied the other. Tiie 
whole system is an insult to democracy, and ought 
to be swept away. 

Our diplomatic system, too, is servilely copied 
from the usages of kings who plotted with each 
other against the liberties of the people, before the 
ocean steamship and the telegraph were invented. It 
serves no purpose save to reward unscrupulous 
politicians and corruptionists, and occasionally to 
demoralize a poet. To abolish it would save ex- 
pense, corruption and national dignity. 

In legal administration there is a large field for 
radical reform. Here, too, we have servilely copied 
English precedents, and have allowed lawyers to 
make law in the interests of their class until justice 
is a costly gamble for which a poor man cannot 
afford to sue. The best use that could be made of 
our great law libraries, to which the reports of 
thirty-eight States, of the Federal courts, and of the 
English, Scotch and Irish courts are each year 
being added, would be to send them to the paper 
mills, and to adopt such principles and methods of 
procedure as would reduce our great annj of 
lawyers at least to the French standard. At 
the same time our statute books are full of 
enactments which could, with advantage, be swept 



THE FUNCTIOKS OF GOVEENMENT. 237 

away. It is not the business of government 
to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve 
the fool from the consequences of his own folly. 
Government should be repressive no further than is 
necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal 
rights of each from aggression on the part of others, 
and the moment governmental prohibitions extend 
beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the 
very ends they are intended to serve. For while 
the tendency of laws which prohibit or command 
what the moral sense does not, is to bring law into 
contempt and produce hypocrisy and evasion, so the 
attempt to bring law to the aid of morals as to those 
acts and relations wticli do not plainly involve viola- 
tion of the liberty of others, is to weaken rather than 
to strengthen moral influences ; to make the standard 
of wrong and right a legal one, and to enable him 
who can dexterously escape the punishment of the 
law to escape all punishment. Thus, for instance, 
there can be no doubt that the standard of com- 
mercial honesty would be much higher in the 
absence of laws for the collection of debts. As to 
all such matters, the cunning rogue keeps within the 
law or evades the law, while the existence of a legal 
standard lowers tlie moral standard and weakens 
the sanction of public opinion. 

Restrictions, prohibitions, interferences with the 
liberty of action in itself harmless, are evil in 
their nature, and, though they may sometimes be 



238 



SOCIAL PROBLEMS' 



necessary, may for the most part be likened to medl 
cines which suppress or modify some symptom with- 
out lessening the disease ; and, generally, where 
restrictive or prohibitive laws are called for, the 
evils they are designed to meet may be traced to 
previous restriction — to some curtailment of nat- 
ural rights. 

All the tendencies of the time are to the absorp- 
tion of smaller communities, to the enlargement of 
the area within which uniformity of law and ad- 
ministration is necessary or desirable. But for this 
very reason we ought with the more tenacity to 
hold, wherever possible, to the principle of local 
self-government — the principle that, in things which 
concern only themselves, the people of each politi- 
cal subdivision — township, ward, city or state, as 
may be — shall act for themselves. We have neg- 
lected this principle within our States even more 
than in the relations between the State and National 
Governments, and in attempting to govern great 
cities by State commissions, and in making what 
properly belongs to County Supervisors and Town- 
ship Trustees the business of legislatures, we have 
divided responsibility and promoted corruption. 

Much, too, may be done to restrict the abuse of 
party machinery, and make the ballot the true ex- 
pression of the will of the voter, by simplifying our 
elective methods. And a principle should always be 
kept in mind which we have largely ignored, that 



THE FCTNOTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 239 

the people cannot manage details, nor intelligently 
choose more than a few oflScials. To call upon the 
average citizen to vote at each election for a long 
string of candidates, as to the majority of whom he 
can know nothing unless he makes a business of 
politics, is to relegate choice to nominating conven- 
tions and political rings. And to divide power is 
often to destroy responsibility, and to provoke, not 
to prevent, usurpation. 

I can but briefly allude to these matters, though 
in themselves they deserve much attention. It is 
the more necessary to simplify government as much 
as possible and' to improve, as much as may be, 
what may be called the mechanics of government, be- 
cause, with the progress of society, the functions 
which government must assume steadily increase. 
It is only in the infancy of society that the functions 
of government can be properly confined to provid- 
ing for the common defense and protecting the 
weak against the physical power of the strong. As 
society develops in obedience to that law of inte- 
gration and increasing complexity of which I spoke 
in the first of these chapters, it becomes necessary 
in order to secure equality that other regulations 
should be made and enforced, and upon the primary 
and restrictive functions of government are super- 
imposed what may be called cooperative functions, 
the refusal to assume which leads, in many cases, 
to the disregard of individual rights as surely as 



240 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

does the assumption of directive and restrictive 
functions not properly belonging to government. 

In the division of labor and the specialization ot 
vocation that begin in nn early stage of social de- 
velopment, and increase with it, the assumj)tion by 
individualsot' certain })arts in the business of society 
necessarily operates to the exclusion of other indi- 
viduals. Thus when one opens a store or an inn, 
or establishes a regular carriage of passengers or 
goods, or devotes himself to a special trade or pro- 
fession of which all may have need, his doing of 
these things o])erate8 to prevent others from doing 
them, and leads to the establishment of habits and 
custonis which make resort to him a necessity to 
others, and which would put those wlu) Avere denied 
this resort at a great disadvantage as compared with 
other inilividuals. Thus to secure equality it be- 
comes necessary ti> so limit liberty of action as to 
oblige those who thus take upon themselves quasi- 
public functit)ns to serve withcMit discrimination 
those who may apply to them upon custonuiry con- 
ditions. This principle is recognized by all nations 
that have made any })rogress in civilization, in their 
laws relating to common carriers, innkeejiers, etc. 

As civilization progresses and industrial develop- 
ment goes on, the concentivition which results froni 
the utilization of larger powers and improved pro- 
cesses o{)erates more and more to the restriction and 
exclusion of competition, and to the establishment 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 241 

of complete monopolies. This we may see very 
clearly in the raih-oud. It is but a sheer waste 
of capital and labor to build one railroad alongside 
of another ; and even where this is done, an irre- 
sistible tendency leads either to consolidation or 
to combination ; and even at what are called com- 
peting points, competition is only transitional. The 
consolidation of companies, which in a few years 
bids fair to concentrate the whole railway business 
of the United States in the hands of a half-a-dozen 
managements, the pooling of receipts, and agree- 
ments as to business and charges, which even at 
competing points prevent competition, ai-e due to 
a tendency inherent in the development of tlie rail- 
road system, and of which it is idle to complain. 

The primary purpose and end of government 
being to secure the natural rights and equal liberty 
of each, all businesses that involve monopoly are 
within the necessary province of governmental regu- 
lation, and businesses that are in their nature com- 
plete monopolies become properly functions of the 
State. As society develops, the State must assume 
these functions, in their nature coojierative, in order 
to secui-e the equal rights and liberty of alL That 
is to say, as, in the process of integraticm, the indi- 
vidual becomes more and more dependent upon and 
subordinate to the all, it becomes necessary for gov- 
ernment, wliich is properly that social organ by 



24^ SOOIAL PEOBLEMS. 

which alone the whole body of individuals can act, 
to take upon itself, in the interest of all, certain func- 
tions which cannot safely be left to individuals. 
Thus out of the principle that it is the proper end 
and purpose of government to secure the natural 
rights and equal liberty of the individual, grows the 
principle that it is the business of government to do 
for the mass of individuals those things which can- 
not be done, or cannot be so well done, by indi- 
vidual action. As in the development of species, 
the power of conscious, coordinated action of the 
whole being must assume greater and greater rela- 
tive importance to the automatic action of parts, so 
is it in the development of society. This is the 
truth in socialism, which, although it is" being 
forced upon us by industrial progress and social 
development, we are so slow to recognize. 

In the physical organism, weakness and disease 
result alike from the overstraining of functions and 
from the non-use of functions. In like manner gov- 
ernments may be corrupted and public misfortunes 
induced by the failure to assume, as governmental, 
functions that properly belong to government as the 
controlling organ in the management of common 
interests, as well as from interferences by govern- 
ment in the proper sphere of individual action. 
This we may see in our own case. In what we 
attempt to do by government and what we leave 
undone we are like a man who should leave the 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVEENMENT. 243 

provision of his dinner to the promptings of his 
stomach while attempting to govern his digestion by 
the action of liis will ; or like one who, in walking 
through a crowded street or over a bad road, should 
concentrate all his conscious faculties upon the 
movement of his legs without paying any attention 
to where he was going. 

To illustrate : It is not the business of govern- 
ment to interfere with the views which any one may 
hold of the Creator or with the worship he may 
choose to pay him, so long as the exercise of these in- 
dividual rights does not conflict with the equal liberty 
of others ; and the result of governmental interfer- 
ence in this domain has been hypocrisy, corruption, 
persecution and religious war. It is not the busi- 
ness of government to direct the employment of 
labor and capital, and to foster certain industries 
at the expense of other industries ; and the attempt 
to do so leads to all the waste, loss and corruption 
due to protective tariffs. 

On the other hand, it is the business of government 
to issue money. This is perceived as soon as the 
great labor-saving invention of money supplants 
barter. To leave it to every one who chose to do 
so to issue money would be to entail general incon- 
venience and loss, to ofier many temptations to 
roguery, and to put the poorer classes of society at 
a great disadvantage. These obvious considerations 
have everywhere, as society became well organized, 



244: SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

led to tlie recognition of tlie coinage of money as an 
exclusive function of government. When, in tlie 
progress of society, a further labor-saving improve- 
ment becomes possible by tlie substitution of paper 
for the precious metals as the material for money, 
the reasons v^hy the issuance of this money should 
be made a government function become still stronger. 
The evils entailed by wildcat banking in the United 
States are too well remembered to need reference. 
The loss and inconvenience, the swindling and cor- 
ruption that flowed from the assumption by each 
State of the Union of the power to license banks of 
issue ended with the war, and no one would now go 
back to them. Yet instead of doing what every 
public consideration impels us to, and assuming 
wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the 
General Government the power to issue paper money, 
the private interests of bankers have, up to this, 
compelled ns to the use of a hybrid currency, of 
which a large part, though guaranteed by the Gen- 
eral Government, is issued and made profitable to 
corporations. The legitimate business of banking — 
the safe keeping and loaning of money, and the 
making and exchange of credits, is properly left to 
individuals and associations ; but by leaving to them, 
even in part and under restrictions and guarantees, 
the issuance of money, the people of the United 
States sufier an annual loss of millions of dollars, 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 245 

and sensibl}'' increase the influences which exert a 
corrupting eifect upon their government. 

The principle evident here may be seen in even 
stronger light in another department of social life. 

The great "railroad question," with its dangers 
and perplexities, is a most striking instance of the 
evil consequences which result fi-om the failure of 
the State to assume functions that properly belong 
to it. 

In rude stages of social development, and where 
government, neglectful of its proper functions, has 
been occupied in making needless wars and im- 
posing harmful restrictions, the making and im- 
provement of highways has been left to individuals, 
who, to recompense themselves, have been per- 
mitted to exact tolls. It has, however, from the 
first, been recognized that these tolls are properly 
subject to governmental control and regulation. 
But the great inconveniences of this system, and 
the heavy taxes which, in spite of attempted 
regulation, are under it levied upon production, 
have led, as social advance went on, to the assump- 
tion of the making and maintenance of highroads 
as a governmental duty. In the course of social 
development came the invention of the railroad, 
which merged the business of making and main- 
taining roads with the business of carrying freight 
and passengers upon them. It is probably due to 
this that it was not at first recognized that the same 



246 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

reasons which render it necessary for the State to 
make and maintain common roads apply with even 
greater force to the building and operating of railroads. 
In Great Britain and the United States, and, with 
partial exceptions, in other countries, railroads have 
been left to private enterprise to build and private 
greed to manage. In the United States, where rail- 
roads are of more importance than in any other 
cc antry in the world, our only recognition of their 
public character has been in the donation of lands 
and the granting of subsidies, which have been the 
cause of much corruption, and in some feeble attempts 
to regulate fares and freights. 

But the fact that the railroad system as far as yet 
developed (and perhaps necessarily) combines trans- 
portation with the maintenance of roadways, renders 
competition all the more impossible, and brings it 
still more clearly within the province of the State. 
That it makes the assumption of the railroad busi- 
ness by the State a most serious matter is not to be 
denied. Even if it were possible, which may well be 
doubted, as has been sometimes proposed, to have 
the roadway maintained by the State, leaving the fur- 
nishing of trains to private enterprise, it would be 
still a most serious matter. But look at it which 
way we may, it is so serious a matter that it must be 
faced. As the individual grows from childhood to 
maturity, he must meet difficulties and accept respon- 
sibilities fi'om which he well might shrink. So is it 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 247 

with society, New powers bring new duties and new 
responsibilities. Imprudence in going forward ior 
volves danger, but it is fatal to stand still. And how- 
ever great be the difficulties involved in the assump- 
tion of the railroad business by the State, much 
greater difficulties are involved in the refusal to 
assume it. 

It is not necessary to go into any elaborate argu- 
ment to show that the ownership and management 
of railroads is a function of the State. That is 
proved beyond dispute by the logic of events and of 
existing facts. Nothing is more obvious — at least 
in the United States, where the tendencies of modern 
development may be seen much more clearly than 
in Europe — than that a union of railroading with 
the other functions of government is inevitable, 
"We may not like it, but we cannot avoid it. Either 
government must manage the railroads, or the rail- 
roads must manage the government. There is no 
escape. To refuse one horn of the dilemma is to be 
impaled on the other. 

As for any satisfactory State regulation of railroads, 
the experience of our States shows it to be impos- 
sible. A strong-willed despot, clothed with arbi- 
trary power, might curb such leviathans ; but popu- 
lar governments cannot. The power of the whole 
people is, of course, greater than the power of the 
railroads, but it cannot be exerted steadily and in 
details. Even a small special interest is, by reason 



248 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

of its intelligence, compactness and flexibility, more 
tlian a match for large and vague general interests ; 
it has the advantage which belongs to a well-armed 
and disciplined force in dealing with a mob. But 
in the number of its employes, the amount of its 
revenues, and the extent of the interests which it 
controls, the railroad power is gigantic. And, grow- 
ing faster than the growth of the country, it is tend- 
ing still faster to concentration. It may be that the 
man is already born who will control the whole 
railroad system of the United States, as Vanderbilt, 
Gould and Huntingdon now control great sections 
of it. 

Practical politicians all over the United States 
recognize the utter hopelessness of contending with 
the railroad power. In many if not in most of the 
States, no prudent man will run for office if he be- 
lieves the railroad power is against him. Yet in the 
direct appeal to the people a power of this kind 
is weakest, and railroad kings rule States where, 
on any issues that came fairly before the people, 
they would be voted down. It is by throwing their 
weight into primaries, and managing conventions, 
by controlling the press, manipulating legislatures, 
and filling the bench with their creatures, that the 
railroaas best exert political power. The people 
of Cali^'ornia, for instance, have voted against 
the railroad time and again, or rather imagined 
they did, and even adopted a very bad new 



THE rmsrcTioNS of government. 249 

constitution because they supposed the railroad was 
against it. The result is, tliat the great railroad 
company, of whose domain California, with an 
area greater than twice that of Great Britain, is 
but one of the provinces, absolutely dominates the 
State. The men who really fought it are taken 
into its service or crushed, and powers are exerted 
in the interests of the corporation managers which 
no government would dare attempt. This com- 
pany, heavily subsidized, in the first place, as 
a great public convenience, levies on commerce, 
not tolls, but tariffs. If a man goes into business 
requiring transportation he must exhibit his profits 
and take it into partnership for the lion's share. 
Importers are bound by an "iron-clad agreement" 
to give its agents access to their books, and if they 
do anything the company deems against its interests 
they are fined or ruined by being placed at a dis- 
advantage to their rivals in business. Three con- 
tinental railroads, heavily subsidized by the nation 
under the impression that the competition would 
keep down rates, have now reached the Pacific. 
Instead of competing they have pooled their receipts. 
The line of steamers from San Francisco to New 
York via the Isthmus receives $100,000 a month to 
keep up fares and freights to a level with those 
exacted by the railroad, and if you would send 
goods from New York to San Francisco by way of 
the Isthmus, the cheapest way is to first sliip them 



250 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

to England. Shippers to interior points are 
charged as much as though their goods were carried 
to the end of the road and then shipped back again ; 
and even, by means of the agreements mentioned, 
an embargo is laid upon ocean commerce by sailing 
vessels, wherever it might interfere with the mo- 
nopoly. 

I speak of California only as an instance. Tlie 
power of the railroads is apparent in State after 
State, as it is in the National Government. Noth- 
ing can be clearer than that, if present conditions 
must continue, the American people might as Avell 
content themselves to surrender political power 
to these great corporations and their affiliated 
interests. There is no escape from this. The rail- 
road managers cannot keep out of politics, even if 
they wished to. The difficulties of the railroad 
question do not arise from the fact that peculiarly 
bad men have got control of the railroads ; they 
arise from the nature of the railroad business and 
its intimate relations to other interests and indus- 
tries. 

But it will be said, ''If the railroads are even 
now a corrupting element in our politics, what 
would they be if the government were to own and 
to attempt to run them ? Is not governmental man- 
agement notoriously corrupt and inefficient ? Would 
not the effect of adding such a vast army to the 
already great number of government employes, of 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GO^^EENMENT. 251 

increasing so enormously the revenues and expendi- 
tures of government, be to enable those who got con- 
trol of government to defy opposition and perpet- 
uate then* power indefinitely ; and would it not be, 
finally, to sink the whole political organization in a 
hopeless slough of corruption ? " 

My reply is, that great as these dangers may be, 
they must be faced, lest worse befall us. "When a 
gale sets him on a lee shore, the seaman must make 
sail, even at the risk of having his canvas fly from 
the bolt-ropes and his masts go by the board. The 
dangers of wind and sea urge him to make every- 
thing snug as may be, alow and aloft ; to get rid of 
anything that might diminish the weatherly quali- 
ties of his ship, and to send his best helmsmen to 
the wheel, — not to supinely accept the certain 
destruction of the rocks. 

Instead of belittling the dangers of adding to the 
functions of government as it is at present, what I 
am endeavoring to point out is the urgent necessity 
of simplifying and improving government, that it 
may safely assume the additional functions that 
social development forces upon it. It is not merely 
necessary to prevent government from getting more 
corrupt and more inefiicient, though we can no 
more do that by a negative policy than the seaman 
can lay-to in a gale without drifting ; it is necessary 
to make government much more efficient and 
much less corrupt. The dangers that menace us 



262 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

are not accidental. They spring from a universal 
law which we cannot escape. That law is 
the one I pointed out in the first chapter of 
this book — that every advance brings new dangers 
and requires higher and more alert intelligence. As 
the more highly organized animal cannot live unless it 
have a more fully developed brain than those of lower 
animal organizations, so the more highly organized 
society must perish unless it bring to the manage- 
ment of social aifairs greater intelligence and higher 
moral sense. The great material advances which 
modern invention has enabled us to make, neces- 
sitate corresponding social and political advances. 
Nature knows no "Baby Act." We must live up 
to her conditions or not live at all. 

My purpose here is to show how important it is 
that we simplify government, purify politics and 
improve social conditions, as a preliminary to show- 
ing how much in all these directions may be accom- 
plished by one single great reform. But although 
I shall be obliged to do so briefly, it may be worth 
while, even if briefly, to call attention to some 
principles that should not be forgotten in thinking 
of the assumption by the State of such functions as 
the running of railroads. 

In the first place, I think it may be accepted as a 
principle proved by experience, that any consider- 
able interest having necessary relations with govern- 
ment is more corruptive of government when acting 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 263 

upon government from without than when assumed 
bj government. Let a ship in midocean drop her 
anchor and pay out her cable, and though she would 
be relieved of some weight, since part of the weight 
of anchor and cable W(nild be supported by the 
water, not only would her progress be retarded, but 
she would refuse to answer her helm, and become 
utterly unmanageable. Yet, assumed as part of the 
ship, and properly stowed on board, anchor and 
cable no longer perceptibly interfere with her move- 
ments. 

A standing army is a corrupting influence, and a 
danger to popular liberties ; but Mdio would main- 
tain that on this ground it were wiser, if a standing 
army must be kept, tliat it should be enlisted and 
paid by private parties, and hired of them by the 
state? Such an army wouJd be far more corrupting 
and far more dangerous than one maintained directly 
by the state, and would soon make its leaders 
masters of the state. 

I do not think the postal department of the 
government, with its extensive ramifications and its 
numerous employes, begins to be as imj)ortant a 
factor in our politics, or exerts so corrupting an influ- 
ence, as would a private corporation carrying on this 
business, and which would be constantly tempted 
or forced into politics to procure favorable or prevent 
unfavorable legislation. Where individual States 
and the General Government have substituted public 



S54 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

printing-offices for Public Printers, who themscxves 
furnished material and hired labor, I think the 
result has been to lessen, not to increase, corruptive 
influences ; and speaking generally, I think experi- 
ence shows that in all departments of government 
the system of contracting for work and supplies has, 
on the whole, led to more corruption than the system 
of direct employment. The reason I take to be, that 
there is in one case a much greater concentration of 
coriniptive interests and power than in the other. 
The inefficiency, extravagance and corruption 
which we commonly attribute to governmental 
management are mostly in those departments which 
do not come under the public eye, and little concern, 
if they concern at all, public convenience. Whether 
the six new steel crusiers which the persistent lobby- 
ing of contractors has induced Congress to order, 
are well or ill built the American people will' never 
know, except as they' learn through the news- 
papers, and the fact will no more affect their com- 
fort and convenience than does the fitting of the 
Sultanas new breeches, or the latest changes in 
officers' uniforms which it has pleased the Secretary 
of the Navy to order. But let the mails go astray 
or the postman fail in his rounds, and there is at 
once an outcry. The postoffice department is man- 
aged with greater efficiency than any other depart- 
ment of the national government, because it comes 
close to the people. To say the very least, it is 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 265 

managed as efficiently as any private company 
could manage such a vast business, and I think, on 
the whole, as economically. And the scandals and 
abuses that have arisen in it have been, for the 
most part, as to out-of-the-way places, and things of 
which there was little or no public consciousness. 
So in England, the telegraph and parcel-carrying and 
savings bank businesses are managed by govern- 
ment more efficiently and economically than before 
by private corporations. 

Like these businesses — perhaps even more so — 
the railroad business comes directly under the notice 
of the people. It so immediately concerns the 
interests, the convenience and the safety of the 
great body, that under public management it would 
compel that close and quick attention that secures 
efficiency. 

It seems to me that in regard to public affairs we 
too easily accept the dictum that faithful and 
efficient work can only be secured by the hopes of 
pecuniary profit, or the fear of pecuniary loss. "We 
get faithful and efficient work in our colleges and 
similar institutions without this, not to speak of the 
army and navy, or of the postal and educational 
departments of government ; and be this as it may, 
our railroads are really run by men who, from 
switch-tender to general superintendent, have no 
pecuniary interest in the business other than to 
get their pay — in most cases paltry and inefficient 



266 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

— and hold their positions. Under governmental 
ownership they would liave, at the very least, all the 
incentives to faithfulness and efficiency that they have 
now, for that governmental management of railroads 
must involve the principles of civil service reform 
goes without the saying. The most determined 
supporter of the spoils system would not care to 
resign the safety of limb and life to engineers and 
brakemen appointed for political services. 

Look, moreover, at the railroad system as it exists 
now. That it is not managed in the interests of the 
public is clear; but is it managed in the interests 
of its owners ? Is it managed with that economy, 
efficiency and intelligence that are presumed 
to be the results of private ownership and control ? 
On the contrary, while the public interests are 
utterly disregarded, the interests of the stockholders 
are in most cases little better considered. Our rail- 
roads are really managed in the interests of unscru- 
pulous adventurers, whose purpose is to bull and 
bear the stock market ; by men who make the in- 
terests of the property they manage subservient to 
their personal interests in other railroads or in other 
businesses ; who speculate in lands and town sites, 
who give themselves or their friends contracts for sup- 
plies and special rates for transportation, and wlio 
often deliberately wreck the corporation they control 
and rob stockholders to the last cent. From one 
end to the other, the management of our railroad 



THE FUNCTIOKS OF GOVERNMENT, 257 

system, as it now exists, reeks with jobbery and 
fraud. 

That ordinary roads, bridges, etc., should not be 
maintained for profit, either public or private, is an 
accepted principle, and the State of New York has 
recently gone so far as to abolish all tolls on the 
Erie canal. Our postal service we merely aim to 
make self-sustaining, and no one would now think 
of proposing that the rates of postage should be in- 
creased in order to fsiriiish public revenues ; still 
less would any one ^hink of proposing to abandon 
the government p-^^stal service, and turn the business 
over to individu-^.s or corporations. In the begin- 
ning the postal service was carried on by individuals 
with a view to profits. Had that system been con- 
tinued to the present day, it is certain that we 
should not begin to have such extensive and regular 
postal facilities as we have now, nor such cheap 
rates ; and all the objections that are now urged 
against the government assumption of the railroad 
business would be urged against government carriage 
of letters. We never can enjoy the full benefits of the 
invention of the railroad until we make the railroads 
public property, managed by public servants in the 
public interests. And thus will a great cause of the 
corruption of government, and a great cause of 
monstrous fortunes, be destroyed. 

All I have said of the railroad applies, of course, 
to the telegraphy the telephone, the supplying of 
17 



258 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

cities with gas, water, heat and electricity, — in short 
to all businesses which are in their nature monopo- 
lies. I speak of the railroad only because the mag- 
nitude of the business makes its assumption by the 
State the most formidable of such undertakings. 

Businesses that are in their nature monopolies 
are properly functions of the State. The State must 
control or assume them, in self-defense, and for the 
protection of the equal rights of citizens. But beyond 
this, the field in which the State may operate bene- 
ficially as the executive of the great cooperative asso- 
ciation, into which it is the tendency of true civil- 
ization to blend society, will widen with the im- 
provement of government and the growth of public 
spirit. 

We have already made an important step in this 
direction in our public school system. Our public 
schools are not maintained for the poor, as are the 
English board schools — where, moreover, payment 
is required from all who can pay ; nor yet is their main 
motive the protection of the State against ignorance. 
These are subsidiary motives. But the main motive 
for the maintenance of our public schools is, that by 
far the greater part of our people find them the best 
and most economical means of educating their chil- 
dren. American society is, in fact, organized by the 
operation of government into cooperative educational 
associations, and with such happy results that in no 
State where the public school system has obtained 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 259 

would any proposition to abolish it get respectful con- 
sideration. In spite of the corruption of our politics, 
our public schools are, on the whole, much better 
than private schools ; while by their association of 
the children of rich and poor, of Jew and Gentile, 
of Protestant and Catholic, of Republican and 
Democrat, they are of inestimable value in breaking 
down prejudice and checking the growth of class 
feeling. It is likewise to be remarked as to our 
public school system, that corruptive influences seem 
to spring rather from our not having gone far 
enough than from our having gone too far in the 
direction of State action. In some of our States the 
books used by the children are supplied at public 
expense, being considered school property, which 
the pupil receives on entering the school or class, 
and returns when leaving. In most of them, how- 
ever, the pupils, unless their parents cannot afford 
the outlay, are required to furnish their own books. 
Experience has shown the former system to be 
much the better, not only because, when books are 
furnished to all, there is no temptation of those who 
can afford to purchase books to falsely plead indi- 
gence, and no humiliation on the part of those who 
cannot ; but because the number of books required 
is much less, and they can be purchased at cheaper 
rates. This not only affects a large economy in the 
aggregate expenditure, but lessens an important 
corruptive influence. For the strife of the great 



260 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

school-book publishers to get their books adopted 
in the public schools, in which most of them make 
no scruple of resorting to bribery wherever they can, 
has done much to degrade the character of school 
boards. This corruptive influence can only be fully 
done away with by manufacturing school-books at 
public expense, as has been in a number of the 
States proposed. 

Tlie public library system, which, beginning in 
the public-spirited city of Boston, is steadily mak- 
ing its way over the country, and under which both 
reading and lending libraries are maintained at pub- 
lic expense for the free use of tlis public, is another 
instance of the successful extension of the coopera- 
tive functions of government. So are the public 
parks and recreation grounds which we are begin- 
ning to establish. 

Not only is it possible to go much further in the 
direction of thus providing, at public expense, for 
the public health, education and recreation, and for 
public encouragement of science and invention, but 
if we can simplify and purify government it will 
become possible for society in its various subdivi- 
sions to obtain in many other ways, but in much 
larger degree, those advantages for its members that 
voluntary cooperative societies seek to obtain. Not 
only could the most enormous economies thus be ob- 
tained, but the growing tendency to adulteration and 
dishonesty, as fatal to morals as to health, would 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 261 

be checked,* and at least snch an organization of 
industry be reached as would very greatly reduce 
the appropriative power of aggregated capital, and 
prevent those strifes that may be likened to wars. 
Tlie natural progress of social development is un- 
mistakably toward cooperation, or, if the word be 
preferred, toward socialism, though I dislike to use 
a word to which such various and vague meanmgs 
are attached. Civilization is the art of living to-" 
gether in closer relations. That mankind should 
dwell together in unity is the evident intent of the 
Divine mind, — of that Will, expressed in the immu- 
table laws of the physical and moral universe which 
reward obedience and punish disobedience. The 
dangers which menace modern society are but the 
reverse of blessings which modern society may 
grasp. The concentration that is going on in all 
branches of industry is a necessary tendency of our 
advance in the material arts. It is not in itself an 
evil. If in anything its results are evil, it is simply 
because of our bad social adjustments. The con- 
struction of this world in which we find ourselves is 
such that a thousand men working together can pro- 



* There are many manufactured articles for which the producer novi' 
receives only a third of the price paid by the consumer, while adultera- 
tion has gone far beyond detection by the individual purchaser. Not to 
speak of the compounding of liquors, of ole<imargarine and glucose, a 
single instance will show how far adulteration is carried. The adultera- 
tions in ground coifee have driven many people to purchase their coffee 
in the bean and grind it themselves. To meet this, at least one firm of 
large coflFee-roasters, and I presume most of them, have adopted an 
invention by means of which iruitation coffee beans, exactly resembling 
in appearance the genuine article, are stamped out of a paste. These 
they mix in large quantities witii real coffee. 



262 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

duce many times more than the same thousand men 
working singly. But this does not make it neces- 
sary that the nine hundred and ninety-nine must be 
the virtual slaves of the one. 

Let me repeat it, though again and again, for it is, 
it seems to me, the great lesson which existing social 
facts impress upon him who studies them, and that 
it is ail-important that we should heed: The nat- 
ural laws which permit of social advance, require 
that advance to be intellectual and moral as well 
as material. The natural laws which give us the 
steamship, the locomotive, the telegraph, the print- 
ing press, and all the thousand inventions by which 
our mastery over matter and material conditions is 
increased, require greater social intelligenoe and a 
higher standard of social morals. Especially do 
they make more and more imperative that justice 
between man and man which demands the recogni- 
tion of the equality of natural rights. 

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness [right or just doing] and all these things 
shall be added unto you." The first step toward 
a natural and healthy organization of society is to 
secure to all men their natural, equal and inalien- 
able rights in the material universe. To do this is 
not to do everything that may be necessary ; but it 
is to make all else easier. And unless we do this 
nothing else will avail. 

I have in this chapter touched briefly upon 



THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVEKNMENT. 263 

subjects that for tliorougli treatment would require 
mucli more space. My purpose has been to show 
that the simplification and purification of govern- 
ment are rendered the more necessary, on account of 
functions which industrial development is forcing 
upon government, and the further functions which 
it is becoming more and more evident that it would 
be advantageous for government to assume. In 
succeeding chapters I propose to show how, by 
recognizing in practica e method the equal and 
inalienable rights of men to the soil of their country, 
government may be greatly simplified, and corrupt- 
ing influences destroyed. For it is indeed true, as 
the French Assembly declared, that public misfor- 
tunes and corruptions of government spring from 
ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights. 

Of course in this chapter and elsewhere in speak- 
ing of government, the state, the community, etc., 
I use these terms in a general sense, without refer- 
ence to existing political divisions. "What should 
properly belong to the township or ward, what to 
the county or state, what to the nation, and what 
to such federations of nations as it is in the manifest 
line of civilization to evolve, is a matter into which 
I have not entered. As to the proper organization 
of government, and the distribution of powers, there 
is much need for thouijht. 



CHAPTEE XYIIL 

WHAT WE MUST DO. 

At the risk of repetition let me recapitulate : 
The main source 'of the difficulties that menace 
us is the growing inequality in the distribution of 
wealth. To this all modern inventions seem to 
contribute, and the movement is hastened by politi- 
cal corruption, and by special monopolies established 
by abuse of legislative power. But the primary 
cause lies evidently in fundamental social adjust- 
ments — in tlie relations which we have established 
between labor and the natural material and means 
of labor — between man and the planet which is 
his dwelling-place, workshop and storehouse. As 
the earth must be the foundation of every material 
structure, so institutions which regulate the use of 
land constitute the foundation of every social organi- 
zation, and must affect the whole character and 
development of that organization. In a society 
where tlie equality of natural riglits is recognized, it 
is manifloSt that there can be no great disparity in 
fortunes. None except the physically incapacitated 
will be dependent on others ; non3 will be forced to 
sell their labor to others. There will be differences 
in wealth, for there are differences among men as to 

264 



WHAT "WE MUST DO. 265 

energy, skill, prudence, foresight and industry ; but 
there can be no very rich class, and no very poor 
class ; and, as each generation becomes possessed of 
equal natural opportunities, whatever differences in 
fortune grow up in one generation will not tend to 
perpetuate themselves. In such a community, wliat- 
ever may be its form, tlie political organization must 
be essentially democratic. 

But, in a community where the soil is treated as 
the property of but a portion of the people, some 
of these people from the very day of their birth 
must be at a disadvantage, and some will have an 
enormous advantage. Those who have no rights in 
the land will be forced to sell their labor to the land- 
holders for what they can get ; and, in fact, cannot 
live without the landlords' permission. Such a 
community must inevitably develop a class of mas- 
ters and a class of serfs — a class possessing great 
wealth, and a class having nothing ; and its political 
organization, no matter what its form, must become 
a virtual despotism. 

Our fundamental mistake is in treating land as 
private property. On this false basis modern civili- 
zation everywhere rests, and hence, as material 
progress goes on, is everywhere developing such 
monstrous inequalities in condition as must ulti- 
mately destroy it. As without land man cannot 
exist ; as his very physical substance, and all that 
he can acquire or make, must be drawn from the 



266 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

land, the ownership of the land of a country is 
necessarily the ownership of the people of that 
country — involving their industrial, social and 
political subjection. Here is the great reason why 
the labor-saving inventions, of which our century 
has been so strikingly prolific, have signally failed 
to improve the condition of laborers. Labor-saving 
inventions primarilj^ increase the power of labor, 
and should, therefore, increase wages and improve 
the condition of the laboring classes. But this only 
where land is free to labor ; for labor cannot exert 
itself without land. No labor-saving inventions can 
enable us to make something out of nothing, or in 
anywise lessen our dependence upon land. They 
can merely add to the efficiency of labor in working 
up the raw materials drawn from land. Therefore, 
wherever land has been subjected to private owner- 
ship, the ultimate effect of labor-saving inventions, 
and of all improved processes and discoveries, is to 
enable landowners to demand, and labor to pay, 
more for the use of land. Land becomes more 
valuable, but the wages of labor do not increase ; on 
the contrary, if there is any margin for possible 
reductions, they may be absolutel}' reduced. 

This we already see, and that in spite of the fact 
that a very important part of the effect of modern 
invention has been, by the improvement of trans- 
portation, to open np new land. What will be 
the efiect of continued improvement in industrial 



WHAT WE MUST DO. 267 

processes when the land of this continent is all 
" fenced in," as in a few more years it will be, we 
may imagine if we consider what would have been 
the effect of labor-saving inventions upon Europe 
had no New World been opened. 

But it may be said that, in asserting that where 
land is private property the benefit of industrial 
improvements goes ultimately to landowners, I 
ignore facts, and attribute to one principle more im- 
portance than is its due, since it is clear that a great 
deal of the increased wealth arising from modern 
improvements has not gone to the owners of land, 
but to capitalists, manufacturers, speculators, rail- 
road owners, and the holders of other monopolies 
than that of land. It may be pointed out that 
the richest family in Europe are the Rothschilds, 
who are more loan-jobbers and bankers than land- 
owners ; that the richest in America are the Yander- 
bilts, and not the Astors ; that Jay Gould got his 
money, not by securing land, but by bulling and 
bearing the stock market, by robbing people with 
hired lawyers and purchased judges and corrupted 
legislatures. I may be asked if I attach no impor- 
tance to the jobbery and robbery of the tariff, under 
pretense of "protecting American labor"; to the 
jugglery with the monetary system, from the wild- 
cat State banks and national banking system down 
to the trade-dollar swindle ? 

In previous chapters I have given answers to all 



268 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

such objections ; but to repeat in concise form, my 
replj is, that I do not ignore anj of these things, 
but that thej in nowise invalidate the self-evi- 
dent principle that land being private property, the 
ultimate benefit of all improvements in production 
must go to the landowners. To say that if a man con- 
tinues to play at "rondo" the table will ultimately 
get his money, is not to say that in the meantime he 
may not have his pocket picked. Let me illustrate : 
Suppose an island, the soil of which is conceded 
to be the property of a few of the inhabitants. The 
rest of the inhabitants of this island must either hire 
land of these landowners, paying rent for it, or sell 
their labor to them, receiving wages. As population 
increases, the competition between the non-land- 
owners for employment or the means of employment 
must increase rent and decrease wages until the 
non-landowners get merely a bare living, and the 
landholders get all the rest of the produce of the 
island. Now, suppose any improvement or inven- 
tion made which will increase the efiiciency of labor, 
it is manifest that, as soon as it becomes general, 
the competition between the non-landholders must-- 
give to the landholders all the benefit. JSTo matter 
how great the improvement be, it can have but this 
ultimate result. If the improvements are so great 
that all the wealth the island can produce or that 
the landowners care for can be obtained with one- 
half the labor, they can let the other half of the 



WHAT WE MUST DO. 269 

laborers starve or evict them into the sea ; or if they 
are pious people of the conventional sort, who 
believe that God Almighty intended these laborers 
to live, tliongh he did not provide any land for them 
to live on, tliey may support them as paupers or 
ship them off to some other country as the English 
Government is shipping the '"surplus" Irishmen. 
But whether they let them die or keep them alive, 
they would have no use for them, and, if improve- 
ment still went on, they would have use for less and 
less of them. 

This is the general principle. 

But in addition to this population of landowners 
and their tenants and laborei^s, let us suppose 
there are on the island a storekeeper, an inventor, 
a gambler and a pirate. To make our supposition 
conform to modern fashions, we will suppose a 
highly respectable gambler — one of the kind who 
endows colleges and subscribes to the conversion of 
the heathen — and a very gentlemanly pirate, who 
flies on his swift cruiser the ensign of a yacht club 
instead of the old raw head and bloody bones, but 
who, even more regularly and efficiently than the 
old-fashioned pirate, levies his toll. 

Let us suppose the storekeeper, the gambler and 
the pirate well established in business and making 
money. Along comes the inventor, and says : 
'•I have an invention which will greatly add to the 
efficiency of labor and enable you to greatly increase 



270 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

the produce of this island, so that there will he very 
much more to divide among you all ; hut, as a con- 
dition for telling you of it, I want you to agree that 
I shall have a royalty upon its use. " This is agreed 
to, the invention is adopted, and does greatly 
increase the production of wealth. But it does not 
benefit the laborers. The competition between 
them still forces them to pay such high rent or take 
such low wages that they are no better oif than 
before. They still barely live. But the whole 
benefit of the invention does not in this case 
go to the landowners. The inventor's royalty gives 
him a great income, while the storekeeper, the 
gambler and the pirate all find their incomes much 
increased. Tlie incomes of each one of these four, 
we may readily suppose, are larger than any single 
one of the landowners, and their gains ofifer the 
most striking contrast to the poverty of the laborers, 
w^ho are bitterly disappointed at not getting any 
share of the increased wealth that followed the 
improvement. Something they feel is wrong, and 
some among them even begin to mui'mur that the 
Creator of the island surely did not make it for the 
benefit of only a few of its inhabitants, and that, as 
the common creatures of the Creator, they, too, have 
some rights to the use of the soil of the island. 

Suppose tlien some one to arise and say : "What 
is the use of discussing such abstractions as the 
land question, that cannot come into practical 



WHAT "WE MUST DO. 271 

politics for many a day, and that can only excite 
dissension and general unpleasantness, and that, 
moreover, savor of communism, which 'as you 
laborers, who have nothing but your few rags, very 
well know is a highly wicked and dangerous thing, 
meaning the robbery of widow women and orpLans, 
and being opposed to religion ? Let us be practical. 
You laborers are poor and can scarcely get a living, 
because you are swindled by the storekeeper, taxed 
by the inventor, gouged by the gambler and robbed 
by the pirate. Landholders and non-landholders, 
our interests are in common as against these vam- 
pires. Let us unite to stop their exactions. The store- 
keeper makes a profit of from ten to fifty per cent. 
on all that he sells. Let us form a cooperative 
society, which will sell everything at cost and enable 
laborers to get rich by saving the storekeeper's 
profit on all that they use. As for the inventor, he 
has been already well enough paid. Let us stop his 
royalty, and there will be so much more to divide 
between the landowners and the non-landowners. 
As for the gambler and the pirate, let us put a sum- 
mary end to their proceedings and drive them off 
the island ! " 

Let us imagine a roar of applause, and these pro- 
positions carried out. What then ? Then the land- 
owners would become so much the richer. The 
laborers would gain nothing, unless it might be in a 



272 SOCIAL PE0BLEM8. 

clearer apprehension of tlie ultimate cause of their 
poverty. For, although by getting rid of the store- 
keeper, the laborers might be able to live cheaper, 
the competition between them would soon force 
them to give up this advantage to the landowners 
by taking lower wages or giving higher rents. And 
so the elimination of the inventor's royalty, and of 
the pickings and stealings of the gambler and pirate, 
would only make land more valuable and increase 
the incomes of the landholders. The saving made 
by getting rid of the storekeeper, inventor, gambler 
and pirate would accrue to their beneiit, as did the 
increase in production from the application of the 
invention. 

That all this is true we may see, as I have shown. 
The growth of the railroad system has, for instance, 
resulted in putting almost the whole transportation 
business of the country in the hands of giant mo- 
nopolies, who, for the most part, charge " what the 
traffic will bear," and who frequently discriminate 
in the most outrageous way against localities. The 
effect where this is done, as is alleged in the com- 
plaints that are made, is to reduce the price of land. 
And all this might be remedied, without raising 
wages or improving the condition of labor. It 
would only make land more valuable — that is to 
say, in consideration of the saving effected in trans- 
portation, labor would have to pay a higher premium 
for land. 



WHAT WE MUST DO. 273 

So with all monopolies, and their name is legion. 
If all monopolies, save the monopoly of land, were 
abolished ; if, even, by means of cooperative socie- 
ties, or other devices, the profits of excha.nge were 
saved, and goods passed from producer to consumer 
at the minimum of cost; if government were re- 
formed to the point of absolute purity and economy, 
nothing whatever would be done toward equali- 
zation in the distribution of wealth. The competi- 
tion between laborers, who, having no rights in the 
land, cannot work without some one else's permis- 
sion, would increase the value of land, and force 
wages to the point of bare subsistence. 

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not say that 
in the recognition of the equal and unalienable 
right of each human being to the natural elements 
from which life must be supported and wants satis- 
fied, lies the solution of all social problems. I fully 
recognize the fact that even after we do this, much 
will remain to do. We might recognize the equal 
right to land, and yet tyranny and spoliation be 
continued. But whatever else we do, so long as we 
fail to recognize the equal right to the elements of 
nature, nothing will avail to remed}^ that unnatural 
inequality in the distribution of wealth which is 
fraught with so much evil and danger. Reform as we 
may, until we make this fundamental reform our 
material progress can but tend to difierentiate our 



274 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

people into the monstrously rich and the frightfully 
poor. "Whatever be the increase of wealth, the 
masses will still be ground toward the point of bare 
subsistence — we must still have our great criminal 
classes, our paupers and our tramps, men and 
women driven to degradation and desperation from 
inability to make an honest living. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

i'HE FIRST GREAT SEFOEM. 

Do what we may, we can accomplish nothing reai 
and lasting until we secure to all the first of those 
equal and unalienable rights with which, as our 
Declaration of Independence has it, man is endowed 
by his Creator — the equal and unalienable right to 
the use and benefit of natural opportunities. 

There are people who are always trying to find 
some mean between right and wrong — people 
who, if they were to see a man about to be un- 
justly beheaded, might insist that the proper thing 
to do would be to chop ofi" his feet. These are the 
people who, beginning to recognize the importance 
of the land question, propose in Ireland and Eng- 
land such measures as judicial valuations of rents 
and peasant proprietary, and in the United States, 
the reservation to actual settlers of what is left o.( 
the public lands, and the limitation of estates. 

Nothing whatever can be accomplished by such 
timid, illogical measures. If we would cure social 
disease we must go to the root. 

There is no use in talking of reserving what 
there may be left of our public domain to actual 
settlers. That would be merely a locking of the 

275 



276 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

stable door after the horse had been stolen, and 
even if it were not, would avail nothing. 

There is no use in talking about restricting the 
amount of land any one man may hold. That, even 
if it were practicable, were idle, and would not 
meet the difficulty. The ownership of an acre in a 
city may give more command of the labor of others 
than the ownership of a hundred thousand acres in 
a sparsely settled district, and it is utterly impossible 
by any legal device to prevent the concentration of 
property so long as the general causes which irre- 
sistibly tend to the concentration of property remain 
untouched. So long as the wages tend to the point 
of a bare living for the laborer we cannot stop the 
tendency of property of all kinds to concentration, 
and this must be the tendency of wages until equal 
rights in the soil of their country are secured to all. 
We can no more abolish industrial slavery by 
limiting the size of estates than we could abolish 
chattel slavery by putting a limit on the number of 
slaves a single slaveholder might own. In the one 
case as in the other, so far as such restrictions could 
be made operative they would only increase the 
difficulties of abolition by enlarging the class who 
would resist it. 

There is no escape from it. If we would save 
the republic before social inequality and political 
demoralization have reached the point when no 
salvation is possible, we must assert the principle of 



THE FIRST GEEAT KEFOKM. 277 

the Declaration of Independence, acknowledge the 
equal and unalienable rights which inhere in man 
bj endowment of the Creator, and make land com- 
mon property. 

If there seems anything strange in the idea that 
all men have equal and unalienable rights to the use 
of the earth, it is merely that habit can blind us to 
the most obvious truths. Slavery, polygam} , canni- 
balism, the flattening of children's heads, or the 
squeezing of their feet, seem perfectly natural to 
those brought up where such institutions or customs 
exist. But, as a matter of fact, nothing is more 
repugnant to the natural perceptions of men than 
that land should be treated as subject to individual 
ownership, like things produced by labor. It is only 
among an insignificant fraction of the people who 
have lived on the earth that the idea that the earth 
itself could be made private property has ever 
obtained ; nor has it ever obtained save as the 
result of a long course of usurpation, tyranny and 
fraud. This idea reached development among the 
Romans, whom it corrupted and destroyed. It 
took many generations for it to make its way among 
our ancestors ; and it did not, in fact, reach full rec- 
ognition until two centuries ago, when, in the time 
of Charles II, the feudal dues were sliaken off 
by a landholders' parliament. We accepted it as 
we have accepted the aristocratic organization of 
our army and navy, and many other things, in 



278 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

which we have servilely followed European custom. 
Land being plenty and population sparse, we did 
not realize what it would mean when in two or 
three cities we should have the population of the 
thirteen colonies. But it is time that we should 
begin to think of it now, when we see ourselves 
confronted, in spite of our free political institutions, 
with all the problems that menace Europe — when, 
though our virgin soil is not quite yet fenced in, 
we have a "working class," a "criminal class" 
and a "pauper class"; when there are already 
thousands of so-called free citizens of the republic 
who cannot by the hardest toil make a living for 
their families, and when we are, on the other hand, 
developing such monstrous fortunes as the world 
has not seen since great estates were eating out the 
heart of Rome. 

What more preposterous than the treatment of 
land as individual property? In every essential 
land differs from those things which being the pro- 
duct of human labor are rightfully property. It is 
the creation of God ; they are produced by man. It 
is fixed in quantity ; they may be increased inimit- 
ably. It exists, though generations come and go ; 
they in a little while decay and pass again into the 
elements. What more preposterous than that one 
tenant for a day of this rolling sphere should collect 
rent for it from his co-tenants, or sell to them for a 
price what was here ages before him and will be 



THE FIRST GREAT REFORM. 27& 

here ages after him ? What more preposterous than 
that we, liv^ing in New York city in this 1883, 
should be working for a lot of landlords who get 
the authority to live on our labor from some English 
king, dead and gone these centuries ? What more 
preposterous than that we, the present population of 
the United States, should presume to grant to our 
own people or to foreign capitalists the right to strip 
of their earnings American citizens of the next 
generation ? What more utterly preposterous than 
these titles to land ? Although the whole people of 
the earth in one generation were to unite, they 
could no more sell title to land against the next 
generation than they could sell that generation. It 
if a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson said, 
that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living. 

Nor can any defense of private property in land 
be made on the ground of expediency. On the con- 
trary, look where you will, and it is evident that 
the private ownership of land keeps land out of 
use ; that the speculation it engenders crowds popu- 
lation where it ought to be more diifused, diffuses it 
where it ought to be closer together ; compels those 
who wish to improve to pay away a large part of 
their capital, or mortgage their labor for years 
before they are permitted to improve ; prevents men 
from going to work for themselves who would gladly 
do so, crowding them into deadly competition 
with each other for the wages of employers ; and 



280 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

enormously restricts the production of wealth while 
causing the grossest inequality in its distribution. 

No assumption can be more gratuitous than that 
constantly made that absolute ownership of land is 
necessary to the improvement and proper use of 
land. What is necessary to the best use of land is 
the security of improvements — the assurance that 
the labor and capital expended upon it shall enjoy 
their reward. This is a very different thing from- the 
absolute ownership of land. Some of the finest 
buildings in Kew York are erected upon leased 
ground. Nearly the whole of London and other 
English cities, and great parts of Philadelphia and 
Baltimore, are so built. All sorts of mines are 
opened and operated on leases. In California and 
Nevada the most costly mining operations, involv- 
ing the expenditure of immense amounts of capital, 
were undertaken upon no better security than the 
mining regulations, which gave no ownership of the 
land, but only guaranteed possession as long as the 
mines were worked. 

If shafts can be sunk and tunnels can be run, and 
the most costly machinery can be put up on public 
land on mere security of possession, why could not 
improvements of all kinds be made on that security ? 
If individuals will use and improve land belonging 
to other individuals, why would they not use and 
improve land belonging to the whole people ? What 
is to prevent land owned by Trinity church, by the 



THE FIRST GREAT REFORM. 281 

Sailors' Snug Harbor, by the Astors or Rheinlanders, 
or any other corporate or individual owners, from 
being as well improved and used as now, if the 
ground rents, instead of going to corporations or 
individuals, went into the public treasuiy ? 

In point of fact, if land were treated as the common 
property of the whole people, it would be far more 
readily improved than now, for then the improver 
would get the whole benefit of his improvements. 
Under the present system, the price that must be 
paid for land operates as a powerful deterrent to 
improvement. And when the improver has secured 
land either by purchase or by lease, he is taxed 
upon his improvements, and heavily taxed in various 
ways upon all that he uses. Were land treated as 
the property of the whole people, the ground rent 
accruing to the community would suffice for public 
purposes, and all other taxation might be dispensed 
with. The improver could more easily get land to 
improve, and would retain for himself the full bene- 
fit of his improvements exempt from taxation. 

To secure to all citizens their equal right to the 
land on which they live, does not mean, as some of 
the ignorant seem to suppose, that every one must 
be given a farm, and city land be cut up into little 
pieces. It would be impossible to secure the equal 
rights of all in that way, even if such division were 
not in itself impossible. In a small and primitive 
community of simple industries and habits, such as 



282 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

that Moses legislated for, substantial equality may 
be secured by alloting to eacli family an equal share 
of the land and making it inalienable. Or, as 
among our rude ancestors in western Europe, or in 
such priraitiv^e society as the village communities of 
Russia and India, substantial equality maybe secured 
by periodical allotment or cultivation in common. Or 
in sparse populations, such as the early New England 
colonies, substantial equality may be secured by 
giving to each family its town lot and its seed lot, 
holding the rest of the land as townland or common. 
But among a highly civilized and rapidly growing 
population, with changing centers, with great 
cities and minute division of industry, and a com- 
plex system of production and exchange, such rude 
devices become ineffective and impossible. 

Must we therefore consent to inequality — must 
we therefore consent that some shall monopolize 
what is the common heritage of all ? Not at all. If 
two men find a diamond, they do not march to a 
lapidary to have it cut in two. If three sons inherit 
a ship, they do not proceed to saw her into three 
pieces ; nor yet do they agree that if this cannot be 
done equal division is impossible ? Nor yet is there 
no other way to secure the rights of the owners of a 
railroad than by breaking up track, engines, cars 
and depots into as many separate bits as there are 
stockholders ? And so it is not necessary, in order 
to secure equal rights to land, to make an equal 



THE FIKST GEEAT EEFORM. 283 

division of land. All that it is necessary to do is to 
collect the ground rents for the common benefit. 

Nor, to take ground rents for the common benefit, 
is it necessary that the State should actually take 
possession of the land and rent it out from year to 
year, or from terra to term, as some ignorant people 
suppose. It can be done in a much more simple 
and easy manner by means of the existing machinery 
of taxation. All it is necessary to do is to abolish 
all other forms of taxation until the weight of taxa- 
tion rests upon the value of land irrespective of 
improvements, and takes the ground rent for the 
public benefit. 

In this simple way, without increasing govern- 
mental machinery, but, on the contrary, greatly 
simplifying it, we could make land common property. 
And in doing this we could abolish all other taxa- 
tion, and still have a great and steadily increasing 
surplus — a growing common fund, in the benefits 
of which all might share, and in the management 
of which there would be such a direct and general 
interest as to afford the strongest guarantees against 
misappropriation or waste. Under this system no 
oi^e could afford to hold land he was not using, and 
land not in use would be thrown open to those who 
wished to use it, at once relieving the labor market 
and giving an enormous stimulus to production and 
improvement, while land in use would be paid for 
according to its value, irrespective of the improve- 



284 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

merits the user might make. On these he would 
not be taxed. All that his labor could add to the 
common wealth, all that his prudence could save, 
would be his own, instead of, as now, subjecting 
him to fine. Thus would the sacred right of 
property be acknowledged by securing to each the 
reward of his exertion. 

Practically, then, the greatest, the most funda- 
mental of all reforms, the reform which will make 
all other reforms easier, and without which no other 
reform will avail, is to be reached by concentrating 
all taxation into a tax upon the value of land, and 
making that heavy enough to take as near as may 
be the whole ground rent for common purposes. 

To those who have never studied the subject, it 
will seem ridiculous to propose as the greatest and 
most far-reaching of all reforms a mere fiscal change. 
But whoever has followed the train of thought 
through which in preceding chapters I have endeav- 
ored to lead, will see that in this simple proposition 
is involved the greatest of social revolutions — a 
revolution compared with which that which de- 
stroyed ancient monarchy in France or that which 
destroj'ed chattel slavery in our southern states, 
were as nothing. 

In a book such as this, intended for the casual 
reader, who lacks inclination to follow the close rea- 
soning necessary to show the full relation of this 
seemingly simple reform to economic laws, I cannot 



THE FIRST GREAT REFORM. 285 

exhibit its full force, but I may point to some of the 
more obvious of its effects. 

To appropriate ground rent* to public uses by 
means of taxation would permit the abolition of all 
the taxation which now presses so heavily upon labor 
and capital. This would enormously increase the 
production of wealth by the removal of restrictions 
and by adding to the incentives to production. 

It would at the same time enormously increase 
the production of wealth by throwing open natural 
opportunities. It would utterly destroy land mo- 
nopoly by making the holding of land unprojBtable 
to any but the user. There would be no temptation 
to any one to hold land in expectation of future 
increase in its value when that increase was certain 
to be demanded in taxes. No one could afford to 
hold valuable land idle when the taxes upon it would 
be as heavy as they would be were it put to the 
fullest use. Thus speculation in land would be 
utterly destroyed, and land not in use would become 
free to those who wished to use it. 

The enormous increase in production which would 
result from thus throwing open the natural means 
and opportunities of production, while at the same 
time removing the taxation which now hampers, 
restricts and fines production, would enormously 



* I use the term ground rent because the proper economic term, rent, 
might not be understood by those who are in the habit of using it in its 
common sense, which applies to the income from buildings and improve- 
ments, as well as laud. 



286 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

augment the annual fund from which all incomes are 
drawn. It would at the same time make the distri- 
bution of wealth much more equal. That great part 
of this fund which is now taken by the owners of 
land, not as a return for anything by which they add 
to production, but because they have appropriated 
as their own the natural means and opportunities of 
production, and which as material progress goes on, 
and the value of land rises, is constantly becoming 
larger and larger, would be virtually divided among 
all, by being utilized for common purposes. The 
removal of restrictions upon labor and the opening 
of natural opportunities to labor, would make labor 
free to employ itself Labor, the producer of all 
wealth, could never become " a drug in the market " 
while desire for any form of wealth was unsatisfied. 
With the natural opportunities of emj)loyment 
thrown open to all, the spectacle of willing men 
seeking vainly for employment could not be wit- 
nessed ; there could be no surplus of unemployed 
labor to beget that cut-throat competition of laborers 
for employment which crowds wages down to the cost 
of merely living. Instead of the one-sided compe- 
tition of workmen to find employment, employers 
would compete with each other to obtain workmen. 
There would be no need of combinations to raise or 
maintain wages ; for wages, instead of tending to the 
lowest point at which laborers can live, would tend 
to the highest point which employers could pay. 



THE rmST GREAT EEFOEM. 287 

and thus, instead of getting but a mere fraction of 
his earnings, the workman would get the full return 
of his labor, leaving to the skill, foresight and capi- 
tal of the employer those additional earnings that are 
justly their due. 

The equalization in the distribution of wealth 
that would thus result would effect immense econo- 
mies and greatly add to productive power. The 
cost of the idleness, pauperism and crime that 
spring from poverty would be saved to the com- 
munity ; the increased mobility of labor, the in- 
creased intelligence of the masses, that would result 
from this equalized distribution of wealth, the greater 
incentive to invention and to the use of improved pro- 
cesses that wouid result from the increase in wages, 
would enormously increase production. 

To abolish all taxes save a tax upon the value of 
land would at the same time greatly simplify the 
machinery and expenses of government, and greatly 
reduce government expenses. An army of custom- 
house officers, and internal revenue officials, and 
license collectors and assessors, clerks, accountants, 
spies, detectives, and government employes of 
every description, could be dispensed with. The 
corrupting effect of indirect taxation would be taken 
out of our politics. The rings and combinations 
now interested in keeping up taxation would cease 
to contribute money for the debauching of voters 
and to beset the law-making power with their 



288 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

lobbyists. We should get rid of the fraud and false 
swearing, of the bribery and subornation which 
now attend the collection of so much of our public 
revenues. We should get rid of the demoralization 
that proceeds from laws which prohibit actions in 
themselves harmless, punish men for crimes which 
the moral sense does not condemn, and offer a con- 
stant premium to evasion. "Land lies out of 
doors." It cannot be hid or carried off. Its value 
can be ascertained with greater ease and exactness 
than the value of anything else, and taxes upon 
that value can be collected with absolute certainty 
and at the minimum of expense. To rely upon 
land values for the whole public revenue would so 
simplify government, would so eliminate incentives 
to corruption, that we could safely assume as govern- 
mental functions the management of telegraphs and 
railroads, and safely apply the increasing surplus to 
securing such common benefits and providing such 
public conveniences as advancing civilization may 
call for. 

And in thinking of what is possible in the way 
of the management of common concerns for the 
common benefit, not only is the great simplifica- 
tion of government which would result from the 
reform I have suggested +o be considered, but the 
higher moral tone that wouid be given to social life 
by the equalization of conditions and the abolition 
of poverty. The greed of wealth, which makes it a 



THE FIRST GREAT REFORM. 289 

business motto that every man is to be treated as 
tliougli he were a rascal, and induces despair of 
getting in places of public trust men who will not 
abuse tiiem for selfish ends, is but the reflection of 
the fear of want. Men trample over each other 
from the frantic dread of being trampled upon, and 
the admiration with which even the unscrupulous 
money-getter is regarded springs from habits of 
thought engendered by the fierce struggle for exist- 
ence to which the most of us are obliged to give up 
our best energies. But when no one feared want, 
when every one felt assured of his ability to make 
an easy and independent living for himself and his 
family, that popular admiration which now spurs 
even the rich man still to add to his wealth would 
be given to other things than the getting of money. 
We should learn to regard the man who strove to 
get more than he could use, as a fool — as indeed 
he is. 

He must have eyes only for the mean and vile, 
who has mixed with men without realizing that 
selfishness and greed and vice and crime are largely 
the result of social conditions which bring out the 
bad qualities of human nature and stunt the good ; 
without realizing that there is even now among men 
patriotism and virtue enough to secure us the best 
possible management of public afiiiirs if our social 
and political adjustments enabled us to utilize those 
qualities. Who has not known poor men who might 



290 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

safely be trusted with untold millions ? Who has 
not met with rich men who retained the most ardent 
sympathy with their fellows, the warmest devotion 
to all that would benefit their kind ? Look to-day at 
our charities, hopeless of permanent good though 
they may be ! They at least show the existence ol 
unselfish sympathies, capable, if rightly directed, of 
the largest results. 

It is no mere fiscal reform that I propose ; it is a 
conforming of the most important social adjust- 
ments to natural laws. To those who have never 
given thought to the matter, it may seem irreve- 
rently presumptuous to say that it is the evident 
intent of the Creator that land values should be the 
subject of taxation ; that rent should be utilized for 
the benefit of the entire community. Yet to 
whoever does think of it, to say this will appear no 
more presumptuous than to say that the Creator has 
intended men to walk on their feet, and not on their 
hands. Man, in his social relations, is as much 
included in the creative scheme as man in his 
physical relations. Just as certainly as the fish was 
intended to swim in the water, and the bird to fly 
through the air, and monkeys to live in trees, and 
moles to burrow underground, was man intended to 
live with his fellows. He is by nature a social 
animal. And the creative scheme must embrace 
the life and development of society, as truly as it 
embraces the life and development of the individual- 



THE FIRST GKEAT EEFOEM. 291 

Our civilization cannot carry us beyond the domain 
of law. Railroads, telegraphs and labor-saving 
machinery are no more accidents than are flowers 
and trees. 

Man is driven by his instincts and needs to form 
society. Society, thus formed, has certain needs 
and functions for which revenue is required. 
These needs and functions increase with social 
development, requiring a larger and larger revenue. 
Now, experience and analogy, if not the instinctive 
perceptions of the human mind, teach us that there 
is a natural way of satisfying every natural want. 
And if human society is included in nature, as it 
surely is, this must apply to social wants as well as 
to the wants of the individual, and there must be a 
natural or right method of taxation, as there is a 
natural or right method of walking. 

We know, beyond peradventure, that the natural 
or right way for a man to walk is on his feet, 
and not on his hands. We know this of a surety — 
because the feet are adapted to walking, while 
the hands are not ; because in walking on the 
feet all the other organs of the body are free to per- 
form their proper functions, while in walking on 
the hands they are not ; because a man can walk 
on his feet with ease, convenience and celerity, 
while no amount of training will enable him to walk 
on his hands save awkwardly, slowly and painfully. 
In the same way we may know that the natural or 



292 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

right way of raising the revenues which are required 
bv the needs of society is by the taxation of land 
values. The value of land is in its nature and rela- 
tions adapted to purposes of taxation, just as the feet 
in their nature and relations are adapted to the pur- 
poses of walking. The value of land* only arises 
as in the integration of society the need for some 
public or common revenue begins to be felt. It 
increases as the development of society goes on, 
and as larger and larger revenues are therefore 
required. Taxation upon land values does not 
lessen the individual incentive to production and 
accumulation, as do other methods of taxation ; on 
the contrary, it leaves perfect freedom to productive 
forces, and prevents restrictions upon production 
from arising. It does not foster monopolies, and 
cause unjust inequalities in the distribution of 
wealth, as do other taxes ; on the contrary, it has 
the effect of breaking down monopoly and equaliz- 
ing the distribution of wealth. It can be collected 
with greater certainty and economy than any other 
tax ; it does not beget the evasion, corruption and 
dishonesty that flow from other taxes. In short, it 
conforms to every economic and moral require- 
ment. What can be more in accordance with justice 
than that the value of land, which is not created by 



* Value, it must always be remembered, is a totally different thing from 
utility. From the confounding of these two different ideas much error 
and confusion arise. No matter how useful it may be, nothing has a 
value until some one is willing to give labor or the produce of labor 
for it. 



THE FIRST GREAT REFORM. 293 

individual effort, but arises from the existence and 
growth of society, should be taken by society foi 
social needs? 

In trying, in a previous chapter, to imagine a 
world in which natural material and opportunities 
were free as air, I said that such a world as we find 
ourselves in is best for men who will use the intelli- 
gence with which man has been gifted. So, evi- 
dently, it is. The very laws which cause social 
injustice to result in inequality, suffering and degra- 
dation are in their nature beneficent. All this evil 
is the wrong side of good that might be. 

Man is more than an animal. And the more we 
consider the constitution of this world in which we 
find ourselves, the more clearly we see that its con- 
stitution is such as to develop more than animal 
life. If the purpose for which this world existed 
were merely to enable animal man to eat, drink and 
comfortably clothe and house himself for his little 
day, some such world as I have previously endea- 
vored to imagine would be best. But the purpose 
of this world, so far at least as man is concerned, 
is evidently the development of moral and intellec- 
tual, even more than of animal, powers. Whether 
we consider man himself or his relations to nature 
external to him, the substantial truth of that bold 
declaration of the Hebrew scriptures, that man has 
been created in the image of God, forces itself upon 
the mind. 



294 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

If all the material things needed by man could 
be produced equally well at all points on the earth's 
surface, it might seem more convenient for man the 
animal, but how would he have risen above the 
animal level ? As we see in the history of social 
development, commerce has been and is the great 
civilizer and educator. The seemingly infinite di- 
versities in the capacity of different parts of the 
earth's surface lead to that exchange of productions 
which is the most powerful agent in preventing 
isolation, in breaking down prejudice, in increasing 
knowledge and widening thought. These diversi- 
ties of nature, which seemingly increase with our 
knowledge of nature's powers, like the diversities in 
the aptitudes of individuals and communities, which 
similarly increase with social development, call 
forth powers and give rise to pleasures which could 
never arise had man been placed, like an ox, in a 
boundless field of clover. The ' ' international law 
of God " which we fight with our tariffs, — so short- 
sighted are the selfish prejudices of men — is the 
law which stimulates mental and moral progress ; 
the law to which civilization is due. 

And so, when we consider the phenomenon of rent, 
it reveals to u.s one of those beautiful and beneficent 
adaptations, in which more than in anything else 
the human mind recognizes evidences of Mind in- 
finitely greater, and catches glimpses of the Master 
Workman, 



THE riEST GREAT EEFORM. 295 

This is the law of rent : As individuals come to- 
gether in communities, and society grows, integrat- 
ing more and more its individual members, and 
making general interests and general conditions of 
more and more relative importance, there arises, 
over and above the value which individuals can 
create for themselves, a value which is created by 
the community as a whole, and which, attaching to 
land, becomes tangible, definite and capable of com- 
putation and appropriation. As society grows, so 
grows this value, which springs from and represents 
in tangible form what society as a whole contributes 
to production, as distinguished from what is con- 
tributed by individual exertion. By virtue of nat- 
ural law in those aspects which it is the purpose of 
the science we call political economy to discover, as 
it is the purpose of the sciences which we call 
chemistry and astronomy to discover other aspects 
of natural law, — all social advance necessarily con- 
tributes to the increase of this common value ; to the 
growth of this common fund. 

Here is a provision made by natural law for the 
increasing needs of social growth ; here is an adapta- 
tion of nature by virtue of which the natural progress 
of society is a progress toward equality, not toward 
inequality ; a centripetal force tending to unity, 
growing out of and ever balancing a centrifugal 
force tending to diversity. Here is a fund belong- 
ing to society as a whole from which, without the 



296 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

degradation of alms, private or public, provision 
can be made for the weak, the helpless, the aged ; 
from which provision can be made for the common 
wants of all as a matter of common right to each, 
and bj the utilization of which society, as it 
advances, may pass, by natural methods and easy 
stages from a rude association for purposes of 
defense and police, into a cooperative association, 
in which combined power guided by combined intel- 
ligence can give to each more than his own ex- 
ertions nmltiplied many fold could produce. 

By making land private property, by permitting 
individuals to appropriate this fund which nature 
plainly intended for the use of all, we throw the 
children's bread to the dogs of Greed and Lust ; we 
produce a primary inequality which gives rise in 
every direction to other tendencies to inequality ; 
and from this perversion of the good gifts of the 
Creator, from this ignoring and defying of his social 
laws, there arise in the very heart of our civilization 
those horrible and monstrous things that betoken 
social putrefaction. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE AMERICAN FAKMEE. 

It is frequently asserted that no proposition for 
the recognition of common rights to land can 
become a practical question in the United States 
because of the opposition of the farmers who own 
their own farms, and who constitute the great body 
of our population, wielding when they choose to 
exert it a dominating political power. 

That new ideas make their way more slowly 
among an agricultural population than among the 
population of cities and towns is true — though, I 
think, in less degree true of the United States than 
of any other country. But beyond this, it seems to 
me that those who look upon the small farmers of 
the United States as forming an impregnable bul- 
wark to private property in land very much miscal- 
culate. 

Even admitting, which I do not, that farmers 
could be relied upon to oppose measures fraught 
with great general benefits if seemingly opposed to 
their smaller personal interests, it is not true that 
such measures as I have suggested are opposed to 
the interests of the great body of farmers. On 
the contrary, these measures would be as clearly to 

297 



298 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

their advantage as to the advantage of wageworkers. 
The average farmer may at first start at the idea of 
virtually making land common property, but given 
time for discussion and reflection, and those who 
are already trying to persuade him that to put all 
taxation upon the value of land would be to put all 
taxation upon him, have as little chance of success 
as the slaveholders had of persuading their negroes 
that the Northern armies were bent on kidnapping 
and selling them in Cuba. The average farmer can 
read, write and cypher — and on matters connected 
with his own interests cyphers pretty closely. He 
is not out of the great currents of thought, though 
they may affect him more slowly, and he is any- 
thing but a contented peasant, ignorantly satisfied 
with things as they are, and impervious to ideas of 
change. Already dissatisfied, he is becoming more 
so. His hard and barren life seems harder 
and more barren as contrasted with the excitement 
and luxury of cities, of which he constantly reads 
even if he does not frequently see, and the great 
fortunes accumulated by men who do nothing to add 
to the stock of wealth arouse his sense of injustice. 
He is at least beginning to feel that he bears 
more than his fair share of the burdens of society, 
and gets less than his fair share of its benefits ; and 
though the time for his awakening has not yet 
come, his thought, with the decadence of old 



THE AMERICAN FAEMEE. 299 

political issues, is more and more turning to eco- 
nomic and social questions. 

It is clear that the change in taxation which I 
propose as the means whereby equal rights to the 
soil may be asserted and maintained, would be to 
the advantage of farmers who are working land be- 
longing to others, of those whose farms are virtually 
owned by mortgagees, and of those who are seeking 
farms. And not only do the farmers whose opposi- 
tion is relied upon — those who own their own 
iarms — form, as I shall hereafter show, but a 
decreasing minority of the agricultural vote, and a 
small and even more rapidly decreasing minority of 
the aggregate vote ; but the change would be so 
manifestly to the advantage of the smaller farmers 
who constitute the great body, that when they 
come to understand it they will favor instead of 
opposing it. The farmer who cultivates his own 
small farm with his own hands is a landowner, it is 
true, but he is in greater degree a laborer, and in 
his ownership of stock, improvements, tools, etc., a 
capitalist. It is from his labor, aided by this 
capital, rather than from any advantage represented 
by the value of his land, that he derives his living. 
His main interest is that of a producer, not that 
of a landowner. 

There lived in Dublin, some years ago, a gentle- 
man named Murphy — "Cozy" Mui-phy, they 
called him, for short, and- because he was a very 



300 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

comfortable sort of a Murphy. Cozy Murpliy 
owned land in Tipperary ; but as he had an agent 
in Tipperary to collect his rents and evict his ten- 
ants when they did not pay, he himself lived in 
Dublin, as being the more comfortable place. And 
he concluded, at length, that the most comfortable 
place in Dublin, in fact the most comfortable place 
in the whole world, was — in bed. So he went to 
bed and stayed there for nearly eight years ; not 
because he was at all ill, but because he liked it. 
He ate his dinners, and drank his wine, and smoked 
his cigars, and read, and played cards, and received 
visitors, and verified his agent's accounts, and drew 
checks — all in bed. After eight years' lying in bed, 
he grew tired of it, got up, dressed himself, and for 
some years went around like other people, and then 
died. But his family were just as well off as though 
he had never gone to bed — in fact, they were better 
off; for while his income was not a whit dimin- 
ished by his going to bed, his expenses were. 

This was a typical landowner — a landowner 
pure and simple. Now let the working farmer 
consider what would become of himself and family 
if he and his boys were to go to bed and stay there, 
and he will realize how much his interests as a 
laborer exceed his interests as a landowner. 

It requires no grasp of abstractiims for the work- 
ing farmer to see that to abolish all taxation, save 
upon the value of land, would be really to his 



THE AMEEICAN FAKMEE. 301 

interest, no matter how it might affect larger land- 
holders. Let the working farmer consider how the 
weight of indirect taxation falls upon him without his 
having power to shift it off upon any one else ; how 
it adds to the price of nearly everything he has to 
buy, without adding to the price of what he has 
to sell ; how it compels him to contribute to the 
support of government in far greater proportion to 
what he possesses than it does those who are much 
richer, and he will see that by the substitution of 
direct for indirect taxation, he would be largely the 
gainer. Let him consider further, and he will see 
that he would be still more largely the gainer if di- 
rect taxation were confined to the value of land. 
The land of the working farmer is improved land, 
and usually the value of the improvements and of 
the stock used in cultivating it bear a very high 
proportion to the value of the bare land. Now, as 
all valuable land is not improved as is that of the 
working farmer, as there is mmch more of valuable 
land than of improved land, to substitute for the 
taxation now levied upon improvements and stock, 
a tax upon the naked value of land, irrespective of 
improvements, would be manifestly to the advantage 
of the owners of improved land, and especially 
of small owners, the value of whose improvements 
bears a much greater ratio to the value of their land 
than is the case with larger owners ; and who, as 
one of the effects of treating improvements as a 



302 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

proper subject of taxation, are taxed far more 
heavily, even upon the value of theu' land, than 
are larger owners„ 

The working farmer has onlj to look about him 
to realize this. Near bj his farm of eighty or one 
hundred and sixty acres he will find tracts of five 
hundred or a thousand, or, in some places, tens of 
thousands of acres, of equally valuable land, on 
which the improvements, stock, tools and house- 
hold effects are much less in proportion than on his 
own small farm, or which may be totally unim- 
proved and unused. In the villages he will find 
acre, half-acre and quarter-acre lots, unimproved or 
slightly improved, which are more valuable than 
his whole farm. If he looks further, he will see 
tracts of mineral land, or land with other superior 
natm'al advantages, having immense value, yet on 
which the taxable improvements amount to little or 
nothing ; while, when he looks to the great cities, 
he will find vacant lots, twenty-five by one hundred 
feet, worth more than a whole section of agricul- 
tural land such as his ; and as he goes toward their 
centers he will find most magnificent buildings less 
valuable than the ground on which they stand, and 
block after block where the land would sell for 
more per front foot than his whole farm. Mani- 
festly to put all taxes on the value of land would be 
to lessen relatively and absolutely the taxes the 
working farmer has to pay. 



THE AMERICAN FABMEK. 303 

So far from the effect of placing all taxes upon 
the value of land being to the advantage of the 
towns at the expense of the agricultural districts, 
the very reverse of this is obviously true. The 
great increase of land values is in the cities, and 
with the present tendencies of growth this must 
continue to be the case. To place all taxes on 
the value of land would be to reduce the taxa- 
tion of agricultural districts relatively to the taxa- 
tion of towns and cities. And this would be 
only just ; for it is not alone the presence of their 
own populations which gives value to the land of 
towns and cities, but the presence of the more 
scattered agricultural population, for whom they 
constitute industrial, commercial and financial 
centers. 

While at first blush it may seem to the farmer 
that to abolish all taxes upon other things than the 
value of land would be to exempt the richer inhabi- 
tants of cities from taxation, and unduly to tax him, 
discussion and reflection will certainly show him 
that the reverse is the case. Personal property is 
not, never has been, and never can be, fairly taxed. 
The rich man always escapes more easily than the 
man who has but little ; the city, more easily than 
the country. Taxes which add to prices bear upon 
the inhabitants of sparsely settled districts with as 
much weight, and in many cases with much more 
weight, than upon the inhabitants of great cities 



SCii SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

Taxes upon improvements manifestly fall more 
heavily upon the working farmer, a great part 
of the value of whose farm consists of the value of 
improvements, than upon the owners of valuable 
unimproved land, or upon those whose land, as that 
of cities, bears a higher relation in value to the 
improvements. 

The truth is, that the working farmer would be an 
immense gainer by the change. "Where he would 
have to pay more taxes on the value of his land, he 
would be released from the taxes now levied on his 
stock and improvements, and from all the indirect 
taxes that now weigh so heavily upon him. And 
as the effect of taxing unimproved land as heavily 
as though it were improved would be to compel 
mere holders to sell, and to destroy mere specu- 
lative values, the farmer in sparsely settled districts 
would have little or no taxes to pay. It would not 
be until equally good land all about him was in use, 
and he had all the advantages of a well settled 
neighborhood, that his taxes would be more than 
nominal. 

What the farmer who owns his own farm would 
lose would be the selling value of his land, but its 
usefulness to him would be as great as before — 
greater than before, in fact, as he would get larger 
returns from his labor upon it ; and as the selling 
value of other land would be similarly affected, this 
loss would not make it harder for him to get another 



THE AMERICAN FAEMEK. 306 

farm if he wislied to move, while it would be 
easier for him to settle his children or to get more 
land if he could advantageously cultivate more. The 
loss would be nominal ; the gain would be real. It 
is better for the small farmer, and eepecially for the 
small farmer with a growing family, that labor should 
be high than that land should be high. Paradoxi- 
cal as it may appear, small landowners do not profit 
by the rise in the value of land. On the contrary 
they are extinguished. But before speaking of this 
let me show how much misapprehension there is in 
the assumption that the small independent farmers 
constitute, and will continue to constitute, the ma- 
jority of the American people. 

Agriculture is the primitive occupation ; the 
farmer is the American pioneer ; and even in those 
cases, comparatively unimportant, where settlement 
is begun in the search for the precious metals, it 
does not become permanent until agriculture in 
some of its branches takes root. But as population 
increases and industrial development goes on, the 
relative importance of agriculture diminishes. That 
the non-agricultural population of the United States 
is steadily and rapidly gaining on the agricultural 
population is of course obvious. According to the 
census report the urban population of the United 
States was in 1790 but 3.3 per cent of the whole 
population, while in 1880 it had risen to 22.5 per 

20 



306 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

cent.* Agriculture is yet the largest occupation, 
but in the aggregate other occupations much exceed 
it. According to the census, which, unsatisfactory 
as it is, is yet the only authority we have, the 
number of persons engaged in agriculture in 1880 
was 7,670,493 out of 17,392,099 returned as engaged 
in gainful occupations of all kinds. Or, if we take 
the number of adult males as a better comparison 
of political power, we may find, with a little figuring, 
that the returns show 6,491,116 males of sixteen 
years and over engaged in agriculture, against 
7,422,639 engaged in other occupations. According 
to these figures the agricultural vote is already in a 
clear minority in the United States, while the pre- 
ponderance of the non-agricultural vote, already 
great, is steadily and rapidly increasing, f 

But while the agricultural population of the 
United States is thus already in a minority, the men 
who own their own farms are already in a minority 
in the agricultural population. According to the 
census the number of farms and plantations in the 
United States in 1880 was 4,008,907. The number 

* It is an illustration of the carelessness with which the census reports 
have been she ^eled together, that although the Compendium (Table 
V) gives the urban population, no information is given as to what is 
meant by urban population. The only clue given the inquirer is that 
the urban population is stated to be contained in 286 cities. Following 
up this clue through other tables, I infer that the population of towns 
and cities of over 8,00n people are meant. 

t Comparing the returns as to occupations for 1870 with 1880, it will 
be seen that while during the last decade the increase of persons en- 
gaged in agriculture has been only i!9.5 per cent, in personal and pro- 
fessional services the increase has been 51.7 per cent, in trade and 
transportation, 51.9 per cent, and in manufacturing, mechanical and 
mining industries, 41.7 per cent. 



THE AMEEICAN FABMEE. 307 

of tenant fanners, paying money rents or snare 
rents, is given by one of the census bulletins at 
1,024,601. This would leave but 2,984,306 nominal 
owners of farms, out of the 7,679,493 persons em- 
ployed in agriculture. The real owners of theh' 
farms must be greatly less even than this. The 
most common form of agricultural tenancy in the 
United States is not that of money or share rent, 
but of mortgage. What proportion of American 
farms occupied by their nominal owners are under 
mortgage we can only guess. But there can be 
little doubt that the number of mortgaged farms 
must largely exceed the number of rented farms, 
and it may not be too high an estimate to put the 
number of mortgaged farms at one-half the number 
of unrented ones.* However this may be, it is 

* Could the fapts be definitely ascertained, I have not the least doubt 
that they would show that at least fifty per cent of the small farm 
ownerships in the older states are merely nominal. That that number, 
at least, of the small farmers in those states are so deeply in debt, so 
covered by mortgages, that their supreme effort is to pay the constantly 
accruing interest, that a roof may be kept over the heads of the family — 
an effort that can have but the one ending. 

In the newer states is found a similar condition of things. The only 
difference is, that there the small farmer is usually compelled to com- 
mence with what, to him, is a mountain of debt. He must obtain his 
land upon deferred payments, drawing interest, and can obtain no title 
until those deferred payments, with the interest, are paid in full. He 
must also obtain his farm implements on part credit, with interest, for 
which he mortgages his crops. Credit must help him to his farm stock, 
his hovel, his seed, his food, his clothing. With this load of aebt must 
the small farmer in the newer states commence, if he is not a capitalist, 
or he cannot even make a beginning. With such a commencement the 
common ending is not long in being found. 

In traveling through those sections, one of the most notable things 
that meets the attention of the observer is the great number of publica- 
tions, everywhere met with, devoted exclusively to the advertising of 
small farm holdings, more or less improved, thnt are for sale. One is 
almost forced to the conclusion that the entire class of small farmers 
are d impelled, from some cause, to find the best and quickest market 
that can be obtained for all that they possess. 

The entire agricultural regions of our country are crowded with loan 
agents, representing capital from all the great money centers of the 



308 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

certain that the farmers who really own their farms 
are but a minority of farmers, and a small minority 
of those engaged in agriculture. 

Further than this, all the tendencies of the time 
are to the extinction of the typical American 
farmer — the man who cultivates his own acres with 
his own hands. This movement has only recently 
begun, but it is going on, and must go on, under 
present conditions, with increasing rapidity. The 
remarkable increase in the large farms and diminu- 
tion in the small ones, shown by the analysis of the 
census figures which will be found in the appendix, 
is but evidence of the fact — too notorious to need 
the proof of figures — that the tendency to concen- 
tration, which in so many other branches of industry 
has substituted the factory for self-employing work- 
men, has reached agriculture. One invention after 
another has already given the large farmer a crush- 
ing advantage over the small farmer, and invention 
is still going on.* And it is not merely in the mak- 
ing of his crops, but in their transportation and 
marketing, and in the purchase of his supplies, that 

world, who are making loans and taking mortgages upon the farms to 
an amount that, in aggregate, appears to be almost beyond oalculaiion. 
In this movement the local capitalists, lawyers and traders appear as 
active co-\vor)s.('TB.— Land and Labor in the United States, by Wm. Godwin 
Moody, New York, 1883, p. 85. 

* One of the most important agricultural inventions yet made is just 
announced in the long sought cotton-picker. If this machine will do 
what is said to have been already demonstrated, it must revolutionize 
the industry of the cotton states, and produce as far-reaching social and 
political effects as the invention of the cotton-gin, which revived and 
extended negro slavery in the United States, and made it an aggressive 
political power. 



THE AMEEICAN FARMEE. 309 

the large producer in agriculture gains an advantage 
over the small one. To talk, as some do, about the 
bonanza farms breaking up in a little while into 
small homesteads, is as foolish as to talk of the 
great shoe factory giving way again to journeymen 
shoemakers with their lapstones and awls. The 
bonanza farm and the great wire-fenced stock ranch 
have come to stay while present conditions last. If 
they show themselves first on new land, it is because 
there is on new land the greatest freedom of devel- 
opment, but the tendency exists wherever modern in- 
dustrial influences are felt, and is showing itself in 
the British Isles as well as in our older states.* 

This tendency means the extirpation of the typi- 
cal American farmer, who with his own hands and 
the aid of his boys cultivates his own small farm. 
When a Brooklyn lawyer or Boston banker can take 
a run in a palace car out to the new Northwest ; buy 
some sections of land ; contract for having it broken 
up, seeded, reaped and threshed ; leave on it a 
superintendent, and make a profit on his first year's 
crop of from six to ten thousand dollars a section, 
what chance has the emigrant farmer of the old type 
who comes toiling along in the wagon which con- 
tains his wife and children, and the few traps that 
with his team constitute his entire capital ? When 

* The persistence of smaU properties in some parts of the continent 
of Europe is due, I take it, to the prevalence of habits differing from 
those of the people of English speech, and to the fact that modem ten- 
dencies are not yet felt there as strongly. 



310 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

English and American capitalists can run miles of 
barbed wire fence, and stock the great enclosure 
with large herds of cattle, which can be tended, car- 
ried to market, and sold, at the minimum of expense 
and maximum of profit, what chance has the man 
who would start stock-raising with a few cows ? 

From the typical American farmer of the era now 
beginning to pass away, two types are differen- 
tiating — the capitalist farmer and the farm-laborer. 
The former does not work with his own hands, but 
with the hands of other men. He passes but a por- 
tion of his time, in some cases hardly any of it, 
upon the land he cultivates. His home is in a large 
town or great city, and he is, perhaps, a banker and 
speculator as well as a farmer. The latter is a prole- 
tarian, a nomad — part of the year a laborer and 
part of the year a tramp, migrating from farm to 
farm and from place to place, without family or 
home or any of the influences and responsibilities 
that develop manly character. If our treatment of 
land continues as now, some of our small independ- 
ent farmers will tend toward one of these extremes, 
and many more will tend toward the other. But 
besides the tendency to production on a large scale, 
which is operating to extirpate the small independ- 
ent farmer, there is, in the rise of land values, 
another powerful tendency operating in the same 
direction. 

At the looting of the Summer Palace at Pekin by 



THE AMEKICAN FABMEE. 311 

the allied forces in 1860, some valuable jewels were 
obtained by private soldiers. How long did they 
remain in such possession? If a Duke of Bruns- 
wick were to distribute his hoard of diamonds 
among the poor, how long would the poor continue 
to hold them? The peasants of Ireland and the 
costermongers of London have their donkeys, which 
are worth only a few shillings. But if by any com- 
bination of circumstances the donkey became as 
valuable as a blooded horse, no peasant or coster- 
monger would be found driving a donkey. Where 
chickens are cheap, the common people eat them ; 
where they are dear, they are to be found only on the 
tables of the rich. So it is with land. As it be- 
comes valuable it must gravitate from the hands of 
those who work for a living into the possession of 
the rich. 

What has caused the extreme concentration of 
land ownership in England is not so much the con- 
version of the feudal tenures into fee simple, the 
spoliation of the religious houses and the enclosure 
of the commons, as this effect of the rise in the value 
of land. The small estates, of which there were 
many in England two centuries and even a century 
ago, have become parts of large estates mainly by 
purchase. They gravitated to the possession of the 
rich, just as diamonds, or valuable paintings, or fine 
horses, gravitate to the possession of the rich. 

So long as the masses are fools enough to permit 



312 SOCIAL PE0BLEM8. 

private property in land, it is rightly esteemed the 
most secure possession. It cannot be burned, or de- 
stroyed by any accident ; it cannot be carried off; it 
tends constantly to increase in value with the growth 
of population and improvement in the arts. Its pos- 
session being a visible sign of secure wealth, and 
putting its owner, as competition becomes sharp, in 
the position of a lord or god to the human creatures 
who have no legal rights to this planet, carries with 
it social consideration and deference. For these 
reasons land commands a higher price in proportion 
to the income it yields than anything else, and 
the man to whom immediate income is of more im- 
portance than a secure investment finds it cheaper 
to rent land than to buy it. 

Thus, as land grew in value in England, the small 
owners were not merely tempted or compelled by 
the vicissitudes of life to sell their land, but it be- 
came more profitable to them to sell it than to hold 
it, as they could hire land cheaper than they could 
hire capital. By selling and then renting, the Eng- 
lish farmer, thus converted from a landowner into a 
tenant, acquired, for a time at least, the use of more 
land and more capital, and the ownership of land 
thus gravitated from the hands of those whose prime 
object is to get a living into the hands of those 
whose prime object is a secure investment. 

This process must go on in the United States as 
land rises in value. We may observe it now. It 



THE AMEEICAIT FAEMEE. 313 

is in the newer parts of our growing cities that we 
find people of moderate means living in their own 
houses. Where land is more valuable, we find such 
people living in rented houses. In such cities, 
block after block is built and sold, generally 
under mortgage, to families who thus endeav^or to 
secure a home of their own. But I think it is the 
general experience, that as years pass by, and land 
acquires a greater value, these houses and 
lots pass from the nominal ownership of dwel- 
lers into the possession of landlords, and are 
occupied by tenants. So, in the agricultural dis- 
tricts, it is where land has increased little if any- 
thing in value that we find homesteads which have 
been long in the possession of the same family of 
working farmers. A general ofiicer of one of the 
great trunk railroad lines told me that his attention 
had been called to the supreme importance of the 
land question by the great westward emigration 
of farmers, which, as the result of extensive inqui- 
ries, he found due to the rise of land values. As 
land rises in value the working farmer finds it more 
and more difficult for his boys to get farms of their 
own, while the price for which ho can sell will give 
him a considerably larger tract of land where land 
is cheaper ; or he is tempted or forced to mortgage, 
and the mortgage eats and eats until it eats him 
out, or until he concludes that the wisest thing he 
can do is to realize the difierence between the 



314: SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

mortgage and the selling value of his farm and 
emigrate west. And in many cases he commences 
again under the load of a mortgage ; for as settle- 
ment is now going, very much of the land sold to 
settlers by railroad companies and speculators is 
sold upon mortgage. And what is the usual result 
may be inferred from such announcements as those 
placarded in the union depot at Council Bluffs, offer- 
ing thousands of improved farms for sale on liberal 
terms as to payment. One man buys upon mort- 
gage, fails in his payments, or gets disgusted, and 
moves on, and the farm he has improved is sold to 
another man upon mortgage. Generally speaking, 
the ultimate result is, that the mortgagee, not the 
mortgageor, becomes the full owner. Cultivation 
under mortgage is, in truth, the transitional form 
between cultivation by the small owner and cultiva- 
tion by the large owner or by tenant. 

The fact is, that the typical American farmer, the 
cultivator of a small farm of which he is the owner, 
is the product of conditions under which labor is 
dear and land is cheap. As these conditions 
change, labor becoming cheap and land becoming 
dear, he must pass away as he has passed away in 
England. 

It has already become impossible in our older 
states for a man starting with nothing to become by 
his labor the owner of a farm. As the public 
domain disappears this will become impossible all 



THE AMEKICAN FAEMER. 315 

over the United States. And as in the accidents 
and mutations of life the small owners are shaken 
from their holdings, or find it impossible to compete 
with the grand culture of capitalistic farming, they 
will not be able to recover, and must swell the mass 
of tenants and laborers. Thus the concentration of 
land ownership is proceeding, and must proceed, if 
private property in land be continued. So far from 
it being to the interest of the working farmer to 
defend private property in land, its continued rec- 
ognition means that his children, if not himself, 
shall lose all right whatever in their native soil ; 
shall sink from the condition of fi*ee men to that of 
serfs. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CITY AND COUNTKY. 

CoBBETT compared London, even in his day, to a 
great wen growing upon the fair face of England. 
There is truth in such comparison. Nothing more 
clearly shows the unhealthiness of present social 
tendencies than the steadily increasing concentra- 
tion of population in great cities. There are about 
12,000 head of beef cattle killed weekly in the 
shambles of New York, while, exclusive of what 
goes through for export, there are about 2, 100 beef 
carcasses per week brought in refrigerator cars from 
Chicago. Consider what this single item in the 
food supply of a great city suggests as to the ele- 
ments of fertility, which, instead of being returned 
to the soil from which they come, are swept out 
through the sewers of our great cities. The reverse 
of this is the destructive character of our agricul- 
ture, which is year by year decreasing the produc- 
tiveness of our soil, and virtually lessening the area 
of land available for the support of our increasing 
millions. 

In all the aspects of human life similar effects are 
being produced. The vast populations of these 
great cities are utterly divorced from all the genial 

S16 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 317 

influences of nature. The great mass of tliem never, 
from year's end to year's end, press foot upon mother 
earth, or pluck a wild flower, or hear the tinkle of 
brooks, the rustle of grain, or the murmur of leaves 
as the light breeze comes through the woods. All 
the sweet and joyous influences of nature are shut 
out from them. Her sounds are drowned by the 
roar of the streets and the clatter of the people in the 
next room, or the next tenement; her sights are 
hidden from their eyes by rows of high buildings. 
Sun and moon rise and set, and in solemn procession 
the constellations move across the sky, but these 
imprisoned multitudes behold tliein only as might a 
man in a deep quarry. The wliite snow falls in 
winter only to become dirty slush on the pavements, 
and as the sun sinks in summer a worse than noon- 
day heat is refracted from masses of brick and stone. 
Wisely have the authorities of Philadelphia labeled 
with its name every tree in their squares ; for how 
else shall the children growing up in such cities 
know one tree from another ? how shall they even 
know grass from clover ? 

This life of great cities is not the natural life of 
man. He must, under such conditions, deteriorate, 
physically, mentally, morally. Yet the evil does 
not end here. This is only one side of it. This 
unnatural life of the great cities means an equally 
unnatural life in the country. Just as the wen or 
tumor, drawing the wholesome juices of the body 



318 SOCIAL PE0BLEM8. 

into its poisonous vortex, impoverishes all othei 
parts of the frame, so does the crowding of human 
beings into great cities impoverish human life in the 
country. 

Man is a gregarious animal. He cannot live by 
bread alone. If he suifers in body, mind and soul 
from being crowded into too close contact with his 
fellows, so also does he suffer from being separated 
too far from them. The beauty and the grandeur 
of nature pall upon man where other men are not to 
be met ; her infinite diversity becomes monotonous 
where there is not human companionship ; his physi- 
cal comforts are poor and scant, his nobler powers 
languish ; all that makes him higher than the ani- 
mal suffers for want of the stimulus that comes from 
the contact of man with man. Consider the barren- 
ness of the isolated farmer's life — the dull round of 
work and sleep, in which so much of it passes. 
Consider, what is still worse, the monotonous exist- 
ence to which his wife is condemned ; its lack of 
recreation and excitement, and of gratifications of 
taste, and of the sense of harmony and beauty ; its 
steady drag of cares and toils that make women 
worn and wrinkled when they should be in their 
bloom. Even the discomforts and evils of the 
crowded tenement house are not worse than the dis- 
comforts and evils of such a life. Yet as the cities 
grow, unwholesomely crowding people together till 
they are packed in tiers, family above family, so are 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 319 

they unwholesomely separated in the country. The 
tendency everywhere that this process of urban con- 
centration is going on, is to make the life of the 
country poor and hard, and to rob it of the social 
stimulus and social gratifications that are so neces- 
sary to human beings. The old healthy social life 
of village and townland is everywhere disappearing. 
In England, Scotland and Ireland, the thinning out of 
population in the agricultural districts is as marked 
as is its concentration in cities and large towns. 
In Ireland, as you ride along the roads, your car- 
driver, if he be an old man, will point out to you 
spot after spot, which, when he was a boy, were the 
sites of populous hamlets, echoing in the summer 
evenings with the laughter of children and the joy- 
ous sports of young people, but now utterly desolate, 
showing, as the only evidences of human occupa- 
tion, the isolated cabins of miserable herds. In 
Scotland, where in such cities as Glasgow, human 
beings are so crowded together that two-thirds of 
the families live in a single room, where if you go 
through the streets of a Saturday night, you will 
think, if you have ever seen the Tierra del Fuegans, 
that these poor creatures might envy them, there 
are wide tracts once populous, now given up to 
cattle, to grouse and to deer — glens that once sent 
out their thousand fighting men, now tenanted by a 
couple of gamekeepers. So across the Tweed, 
while London, Liverpool Leeds, Manchester ap»d 



320 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

Nottingham have grown, the village life of "memo 
England " is all but extinct. Two-thirds of the entire 
population is crowded into cities. Clustering 
hamlets, such as those through .which, according to 
tradition, Shakespeare and his comrades rollicked, 
have disappeared ; village greens where stood the 
may-pole, and the clothjard arrow flew from the 
longbow to the bulFs eye of the butt, are plowed 
under or enclosed by the walls of some lordly de- 
mesne, while here and there stand mementoes alike 
of a bygone faith and a departed population, in 
great churches or their remains — churches such as 
now could never be filled unless the congregations 
were brought from town by railroad excursion 
trains. 

So in the agricultural districts of our older States 
the same tendency may be beheld ; but it is in the 
newer States that its fullest expression is to be 
found — in ranches measured by square miles, where 
half-savage cowboys, whose social life is confined to 
the excitement of the "round-up" or a periodical 
" drunk" in a railroad town ; and in bonanza farms, 
where in the spring the eye wearies of seas of waving 
grain before resting on a single home — farms where 
the cultivators are lodged in barracks, and only the 
superintendent enjoys the luxury of a wife. 

That present tendencies are hurrying modern 
society toward inevitable catastrophe, is apparent 
from the constantly increasing concentration of 



Omr AND COUNTEY. 321 

population in great cities, if in nothing else. A 
century ago ITew York and its suburbs contained 
about 25,000 souls ; now they contain over 
2,000,000. The same growth for another century 
would put here a population of 160,000,000. Such 
a city is impossible. But what shall we say of the 
cities of ten and twenty millions, that, if present 
tendencies continue, children now born shall see? 

On this, however, I will not dwell. I merely 
wish to call attention to the fact that this concentra- 
tion of population impoverishes social life at the 
extremities, as well as poisons it at the center ; that 
it is as injurious to the farmer as it is to the inhab- 
itant of the city. 

This unnatural distribution of population, like that 
unnatural distribution of wealth which gives one 
man hundreds of millions and makes other men 
tramps, is the result of the action of the new indus- 
trial forces in social conditions not adapted to them. 
It springs primarily from our treatment of land as 
private property, and secondarily from our neglect 
to assume social functions which material progress 
forces upon us. Its causes removed, there would 
ensue a natural distribution of population, which 
would give every one breathing space and neighbor- 
hood. 

It is in this that would be the great gain of the 

farmer in the measures I have proposed. With the 

resumption of common rights to the soil, the over- 
21 



822 SOCIAL PEOBLEMS. 

crowded population of the cities would spread, the 
scattered population of the country would grow 
denser. When no individual could profit by 
advance in the value of land, when no one need fear 
that his children could be jostled out of their 
natural rights, no one would want more land than 
he could profitably use. Instead of scraggy, half 
cultivated farms, separated by great tracts lying 
idle, homesteads would come close to each other. 
Emigrants would not toil through unused acres, nor 
grain be hauled for thousand of miles past half-tilled 
land. The use of machinery would not be aban- 
doned : where culture on a large scale secured econ- 
omies it would still go on ; but with the breaking 
up of monopolies, the rise in wages and the 
better distribution of wealth, industry of this kind 
would assume the cooperative form. Agriculture 
would cease to be destructive, and would become 
more intense, obtaining more from the soil and 
returning what it borrowed. Closer settlement 
would give rise to economies of all kinds ; labor 
would be far more productive, and rural life would 
partake of the conveniences, recreations and stimu- 
lations now only to be obtained by the favored 
classes in large towns. The monopoly of land 
broken up, it seems to me that rural life would tend 
to revert to the primitive type of the village sur- 
rounded by cultivated fields, with its common 
pasturage and woodlands. But however this may 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 323 

be, the working farmer would participate fully in all 
the enormous economies and all the immense gains 
which society can secure by the substitution of 
orderly cooperation for the anarchy of reckless, 
greedy scrambling. 

That the masses now festering in the tenement 
houses of our cities, under conditions which breed 
disease and death, and vice and crime, should each 
family have its healthful home, set in its garden ; 
that the working farmer should be able to make a 
living with a daily average of two or three hours' 
work, which more resembled healthy recreation than 
toil ; that his home should be replete with all the 
conveniences yet esteemed luxuries ; that it should 
be supplied with light and heat, and power if needed, 
and connected with those of his neighbors by the tele- 
phone ; that his family should be free to libraries, and 
lectures, and scientific apparatus, and instruction ; 
that they should be able to visit the theatre, or 
concert, or opera, as often as they cared to, and 
occasionally to make trips to other parts of the 
country or to Europe ; that, in short, not merely 
the successful man, the one in a thousand, but the 
man of ordinary parts and ordinary foresight and 
prudence, should enjoy all that advancing civiliza- 
tion can bring to elevate and expand human life, 
seems, in the light of existing facts, as wild a dream 
as ever entered the brain of hasheesh eater. Yet the 



324 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

powers already within the grasp of man make it 
easily possible. 

In our mad scramble to get on top of one another, 
how little do we take of the good things that boun- 
tiful nature offers us. Consider this fact : To the 
majority of people in such countries as England, 
and even largely in the United States, fruit is a 
luxury. Yet mother earth is not niggard of her 
fruit. If we chose to have it so, every road might 
be lined with fruit trees. 



CHAPTEKXXn. 

CONCLUSION". 

Here, it seems to me, is the gist and meaning of 
the great social problems of our time : More is 
given to us than to any people at any time before ; 
and, therefore^ more is required of us. We have 
made, and still are making, enormous advances ob 
material lines. It is necessary that we commensu- 
rately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it 
progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener 
sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, 
loftier, truer public spirit. Failing these, civiliza- 
tion must pass into destruction. It cannot be main- 
tained on the ethics of savagery. For civilization 
knits men more and more closely together, and con- 
stantly tends to subordinate the individual to the 
whole, and to make more and more important 
social conditions. 

The social and political problems that confront 
us are darker than they realize who have not given 
thought to them ; yet their solution is a mere mat- 
ter of the proper adjustment of social forces. Man 
masters material nature by studying her laws, and 
in conditions and powers that seemed most for- 
bidding, has already found his richest storehouses 



326 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

and most powerful servants. Although we have but 
begun to systematize our knowledge of physical na- 
ture, it is evident she will refuse us no desire if we 
but seek its gratification in accordance with her 
laws. 

And that faculty of adapting means to ends which 
has enabled man to convert the once impassable 
ocean into his highway, to transport himself with a 
speed which leaves the swallow behind, to annihilate 
space in the communication of his thoughts, to con- 
vert the rocks into warmth and light and power and 
material for a thousand uses, to weigh the stars and 
analyze the sun, to make ice under the equator, and 
bid flowers bloom in northern winters, will also, 
if he will use it, enable him to overcome social diffi- 
culties and avoid social dangers. The domain of 
law is not confined to physical nature. It just as 
certainly embraces the mental and moral universe, 
and social growth and social life have their laws as 
fixed as those of matter and of motion. Would we 
make social life healthy and happy, we must dis- 
cover those laws, and seek our ends in accordance 
with them. 

I ask no one who may read this book to accept 
my views. I ask him to think for himself. 

Whoever, laying aside prejudice and self-interest, 
will honestly and carefully make up his own mind 
as to the causes and the cure of the social evils that 
are so apparent, does, in that, the most important 



CONCLUSION. 327 

thing in his power toward their removal. This 
primary obligation devolves upon us individually, 
as citizens and as men. Whatever else we may be 
able to do, this must come first. For "if the blind 
lead the blind, they both shall fall into the ditch." 

Social reform is not to be secured by noise and 
shouting ; by complaints and denunciation ; by the 
formation of parties, or the making of revolutions ; 
but by the awakening of thought and the progress 
of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there can- 
not be right action ; and when there is correct 
thought, right action will follow. Power is always 
in the hands of the masses of men. "What oppresses 
the masses is their own ignorance, their own short- 
sighted selfishness. 

The great work of the present for every man, and 
every organization of men, who would improve 
social conditions, is the work of education — the 
propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that 
anything else can avail. And in this work eYerj 
one who can think may aid — first by forming clear 
ideas himself, and then by endeavoring to arouse 
the thought of those with whom he comes in con- 
tact. 

Many there are, too depressed, too embruted 
with hard toil and the struggle for animal existence, 
to think for themselves. Therefore the obligation 
devolves with all the more force on those who can. 
If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all 



328 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he 
has no influence. Whoever he may be, and where- 
ever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes 
a light and a power. That for every idle word men 
may speak they shall give an account at the day of 
judgment, seems a hard saying. But what more 
clear than that the theory of the persistence Oi force, 
which teaches us that every movement continues to 
act and react, must apply as well to the universe of 
mind as to that of matter. Whoever becomes 
imbued with a noble idea kindles a flame from which 
other torches are lit, and influences those with whom 
he comes in contact, be they few or many. How 
far that influence, thus perpetuated, nisij extend, it 
is not given to him here to see. But it may be that 
the Lord of the Yineyard will know. 

As I said in the first of these papers, the "prog- 
ress of civilization necessitates the giving of greater 
and greater attention and intelligence to public 
afi'airs. And for this reason I am convinced that 
we make a great mistake in depriving one sex of 
voice in public matters, and that we could in no way 
so increase the attention, the intelligence and the 
devotion which may be brought to the solution of 
social problems as by enfranchising our women. 
Even if in a ruder state of society the intelligence 
of one sex suffices for the management of common 
interests, the vastly more intricate, more delicate and 
more important questions which the progress of ci viK- 



OONOLTJSION. 329 

zation makes of public moment, require the intelli- 
gence of women as of men, and tliat we never can 
obtain until we interest them in public affairs. And 
I have come to believe that very much of the in- 
attention, the flippancy, the want of conscience, 
which we see manifested in regard to public matters 
of the greatest moment, arises from the fact that we 
debar our women from taking their proper part in 
these matters. Nothing will fully interest men un- 
less it also interests women. There are those who 
say that women are less intelligent than men ; but 
who will say that they are less influential ? 

And I am firmly convinced, as I have already 
said, that to effect any great social improvement, 
it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense 
of duty rather than the desire for self-advance- 
ment, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin 
to admiration, and it is the admiration that the 
rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetua- 
tion of aristocracies. Where tenpenny Jack looks 
with contempt upon ninepenny Joe, the social in- 
justice which makes the masses of the people hewers 
of wood and drawers of water for a privileged few, 
has the strongest bulwarks. It is told of a certain 
Florentine agitator that when he had received a new 
pair of boots, he concluded that all popular griev- 
ances were satisfied. How often do we see this story 
illustrated anew in working-men's movements and 



330 SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. 

trade-union struggles ? This is the weakness of all 
movements that appeal only to self-interest. 

And as man is so constituted that it is utterly im- 
possible for him to attain happiness save by seek- 
ing the happiness of others, so does it seem to be of 
the nature of things that individuals and classes can 
obtain their own just rights only by struggling for 
the rights of others. To illustrate : When workmen 
in any trade form a trades union, they gain, by sub- 
ordinating the individual interests of each to the com- 
mon interests of all, the power of making better terms 
with employers. But this power goes only a little 
way when the combination of the trades union is 
met and checked by the pressure for employment 
of those outside its limits. No combination of 
workmen can raise their own wages much above the 
level of ordinary wages. The attempt to do so is 
like the attempt to bail out a boat without stopping 
up the seams. For this reason, it is necessary, if 
workmen would accomplish anything real and per- 
manent for themselves, not merely that each trade 
should seek the common interests of all trades, but 
that skilled workmen should address themselves to 
those general measures which will improve the con- 
dition of unskilled workmen. Those who are most 
to be considered, those for whose help the struggle 
must be made, if labor is to be enfranchised, and 
social justice won, are those least able to help or 
struggle for themselves, those who have no advan- 



CONCLUSION. 331 

tage of property or skill or intelligence, — the men 
and women who are at the very bottom of the social 
scale. In securing the equal rights of these we shall 
secure the equal rights of all. 

Hence it is, as Mazzini said, that it is around 
the standard of duty rather than around the standard 
of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights 
of man. And herein may we see the deep philoso- 
phy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as 
themselves. 

In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to 
solve social problems and carry civilization onward. 



APPENDIX. 
I. 

CONDITION OF ENGLISH AGEICULTUBAL LABORERS. 

The following communication, from Mr. William Saun- 
ders, of London, was called forth by a letter signed "A Free- 
born Englishman," in which some of the statements made 
in Chapter X of this book were in general terms denied. 

New York. July 24, 1883. 
To the Editor of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper : 

Sir: "A Freeborn Englishman," who "emphatically 
denies " the accuracy of Mr. George's statements, is at a loss 
to conceive from what source he obtained his information. 
On this point I may enlighten him, as I can state from 
experience that Mr. George gained his knowledge by per- 
sonal investigation in the location to which he refers. 
I wish that I could sustain the rose-colored view which " A 
Freeborn Englishman " takes of the condition of the agricul- 
tural laborer in England. For fifty years I have been inti- 
mately acquainted with the state of agriculture in the 
southern part of the country, and during that time the 
standard wages have varied from one and a half to three 
and a half dollars per week. In Wiltshire, at the present 
time, the wages are from two-and-a-quarter to three dollars 
per week. It must be noted that these are the wages not of 
boys but of married men, and that they are the total wages; 
no food is given, and, as a rule, the laborers pay rent for 
a cottage, and always a very high rent for garden land, if they 
have any. Even the highest rate named is quite inade- 
quate to provide a family with sufficient food of the plainest 
kind. It costs four dollars per week to provide food for 
five persons in the poorhouses of Wiltshire. Thus, if a 
man with a wife and three children spend all his wages for 
food he would still be short of the poorhouse allowance, 
which is calculated at a very low rate. 

The statement of " A Freeborn Englishman " that it is a 
rare thing for the aged of the industrial classes to go to the 
w^orkhouse is entirely contrary to my experience, and I may 

333 



334 APPENDIX. 

ask how is it possible for a man to save for old age when the 
laborer has to maintain himself and his family upon a sum 
with which economical poor law guardians cannot support 
paupers ? 

As to commons, they not only have been, but are being 
inclosed by the owners of land. This is also the case with 
spaces on the roadside, so that the working-classes have 
^Dst the means they formerly had for maintaining cows, 
donkeys or geese, and children have been deprived of their 
ancient playgrounds. As to footpaths, these are often 
closed ; but your correspondent is right when he says that 
interrupting an ancient highway excites the indignation of 
the people, and sometimes they tear down the obstruction. 
They did so recently in a case where Mr. E. P. Bouverie 
shut up a path near Devizes, in Wiltshire. Legal proceed 
ings were taken, and, although it was proved that the public 
had enjoyed the use of the footway for over a century, yet 
the landlord was enabled to show that during this period 
the estate had been entailed, so that no owner had the 
power to give the public a right of way, and thus the path 
was closed. By these and similar provisions in laws en- 
acted by landlords, it is possible for a landlord to make con- 
stant encroachments upon the public ; for, if he maintains 
a claim for twenty years it is established in his favor, but 
no length of time can legalize the possession by the public 
against a claim raised by the owners of a family estate. 
Thus, all the time family estates are growing and the public 
are losing. 

In referring to a case near London, " A Freeborn English- 
man " is misleading your readers. The people of London 
insisted upon exempting an area of fifteen miles around 
that city from the operation of Commons Inv^losure Acts, 
and, therefore, the instance to which he refers does not 
apply to England generally. 

It must be puzzling to Americans to meet with such 
difi'erent statements respecting English laborers, and as 
your correspondent does not give the public his name or 
address, it may be allowable to test his as^sertions by the 
internal evidence which his letter affords on the subject of 
his accuracy. He boldly asserts that " an equal distribution 
of property is the general principle that underlies " Mr. 
George's article. I challenge him to refer to a single para- 
graph in any of the voluminous writings of Mr. George 
which justifies the idea that he advocates an equal distribu- 
tion of property. Mr. George's writings are a protest 
against the confiscation by landlords of property created by 
industry, and the statement that he advocates an equal dis- 
^ibution of property is entirely unfounded. 



CONDITION OF ENGLISH AGKICULTUKAL LAB0REE8. 336 

Neither is your correspondent more happy in the asser- 
tion of his own principles than in his misrepresentation of 
Mr. George's views. He tells us that "a man obtains in 
England, as in America and elsewhere, just so much for his 
labor as his labor is worth, according to the law of supply 
and demand." One illustration from each side of the At- 
lantic will disprove this assertion. In Wiltshire, England, 
thousands of acres of excellent land are uncultivated, while 
thousands of half-starved but willing workmen demand an 
opportunity for growing food for themselves and families. 
The land remains out of cultivation, and the laborers remain 
without work, solely because a landlord stands upon the land, 
and says to every farmer who wants to cultivate it, " You 
shall not do so unless you pay me six dollars an acre per 
annum, with an increase in future if I choose to demand it 
at the expiration of any year." If a workingman comes to 
the landlord and says to him, " Please let me have five acres 
of that land, upon which I will work and grow food for my 
own family and others," the landlord replies, " You shall 
not have that land unless you pay me fifteen dollars an acre 
per annum " ; and when the workingman asks why it is pro- 
posed to charge him so much more than is charged the 
farmer, the landlord tells him, " We do not want working- 
men to have land, lest the farmers should be unable to ob- 
tain laborers." Thus the land remains out of cultivation, 
and the laborer without work and without food, because the 
landlord stands between demand and supply. 

In New Jersey, not far from where I am writing, thou- 
sands of acres of land are producing miasma and musquitoes. 
Thousands of willing hands would drain this land and cover 
it with houses and manufactories, but in the meantime a 
landlord's agent stands upon the marsh and demands, in the 
name of a man who has done nothing, a payment of one 
thousand dollars or two thousand dollars an acre before he 
will allow the musquitoes to be suppressed and houses and 
factories to be erected. 

Under these circumstances your correspondent may well 
say, " I should be glad to learn where in this country, or in 
any other countr}'^ on the globe, does a man who has not 
capital obtain the ' full fruits of his labor ' ? " True it is 
that those who have capital and those who can avail them- 
selves of the unjust privileges which law allows to capital, 
in connection with the possession of land, are the only per- 
sons who can obtain the full fruits of their own or other 
persons' labor ; and if the universality of injustice is a sound 
reason for upholding it, then undoubtedly Mr. George is in 
the wrong. 



336 APPENDIX. 

I am willing to admit, as "A Freeborn Englishman " con. 
tends, that in some respects the agricultural laborer is better 
off than his brother laborer in the crowded cities of Europe 
and America ; but, gracious heaven ! is this a matter for 
thankfulness? I have had to spend the summer in New 
York, and with every alleviation that can be provided, my 
fate has been hard enough ; but what must be the condition 
of families crowded into tenement-houses during the sum- 
mer heat? No man ought to think of it without a deter- 
mination to do all in his power to lessen such terrible suffer- 
ing. And this suffering, in New York and other cities, is 
the direct and immediate result of landlordism. In London, 
landlords demand and receive thj'^ty millions of dollars an- 
nually from the working-classes, md they are constantly 
raising their demands. This is tne cause of overcrowding. 
Every month landlords kill more children than Hen )d de- 
stroyed in his lifetime; and yet, as your correspondent 
reminds us, they are men of excellent character. That they 
are all honorable men, I do not dispute ; but the circum- 
stance does not lessen the fearful consequences of the system 
of which they are the agents. It is not of abuses that we 
complain, but of the necessary consequences of landlordism, 
which, like a huge vise, crushes the masses of the people 
with more horrible effect at every turn of the screw. In- 
dustry, intelligence and invention hold out promises of 
improvement which seem to be almost within our reach, 
but before they are obtained the landlord advances his 
claims and the result is disappointment and misery. If this 
state of things continues, it will be the fault, not of the land- 
lords, but of workingmen who have the pOwer, and should 
have the determination, to deliver themselves and their 
children from a fatal influence. I am, 

Yours respectfully, William Saundees. 



11 
A PIECE OF LAND. 

BY FRANCIS G. SHAW. 

Scene— ^ Common. L aboe digging the ground with a stick, to plant potatoes 
Capital passing with a spade on his shoulder. 

Labor. I Bay, Capital, shall you use your spade this year? 

Capital. No, I'm going a-fishing. 

Labor. Lend it to me, then. 

Capital. Why should I ? 

Labor. As a good neighbor. You don't want it, and it 
would be a great help to me. I could plant more ground, 
and, perhaps, raise fifty more bushels of potatoes, if I had it. 

Capital. That's a very one-sided reason. You'd wear it 
oat by the end of the year. You'd have your fifty bushels 
extra, and I should have no spade. You'd be so much bet- 
ter ofl", and I should be so much worse oflf than I am now. 
There's not much good neighborhood in that. 

Labor. Oh, I'd give it back to you just as good as it is 
now ; or I'd make a new one for you. 

[IS OTE.— This is the necessary maintenance or replacement of capi- 
tal which is consumed by use.] 

Capital. That's rather better, but still it's not fair. You'd 
have your fifty bushels more, which you couldn't have 
raised without rdy spade, while I should be no better off 
than I am now. No, thank you ! I'll keep my spade. Go 
make one for yourself. It took me ten days to make this. 

Labor. Yes, but this is the season for planting, aud I 
haven't the time to spare ; I want to use it now. I can't see 
why you shouldn't let me have it as well as leave it to rust» 
which it will since you're not going to use it. 



338 APPENDIX. 

Capital. It's not going to rust. I'll tell you what I meai) 
to do with it: Farmer wants a spade as well as you, and 
offers to give a yearling heifer in exchange for this one. I'm 
on my way now to make the swap, and get her. I shall turn 
her out on the common, and by the end of the year I shall 
have a cow with, perhaps, a calf by her side. Don't you, 
think she'll be worth a good deal more than the new spade 
you offer ? 

[Note.— Capital proposes to take advantage of the active forces oj 
nature which manifest themselves in growth as well as in the produe- 
tiveness of land, and which can be made available by Labob, or by 
Capital, the result of Labor.] 

Lahor. Certainly she will. I never thought of that! Yes; 
if you can swap your spade for the heifer, you've a right to 
as much return from one as from the other. But how much 
do you expect to gain if you do make the exchange? 

Capital. I suppose quite as much as ten bushels of your 
potatoes will be worth when you dig them. 

Lahor. I'll take the spade and give you a new one and ten 
bushels of potatoes. Will that satisfy you? 

Capital. I've rather set my heart on the heifer, and, be- 
sides, your crop may fail. 

Lahor. I hope not; it never has. However, there is 
some little risk, I admit, and I'll give you twelve bushels 
instead of ten. What do you say ? 

Capital. It's a bargain! Here's the spade, and I'll go 
and see about my boat. 

[Note.— Thus Labor employs the wealth which Capital has accumu« 
lated by his past labor, and as both are interested in the crop, Labob 
and Capital become partners. The ten bushels which Capital is to 
receive for the use of the spade may be called interest, to which he is 
justly entitled, from his ability to exchange the spade for something 
which will give him an equal profit by its mere growth, and the other 
two bushels are for insurance against the risk of a failure of the crop.] 

Enter Landowner. 

Landowner {leaning over fence). Hullo, Labor! What arS 
you at work on that moorland for? The soil is much better 
on this side of the fence. You can raise fifty bushels more 
potatoes here than you can there, with the same work 



A PIECE OP LAND. 339 

You'd much better hire this lot of me ; I wouldn't charge 
you much for the use of it. 

Labor. It's true that the soil is better, and I should 
plant there if you haldn't fenced it in ; but you know as well 
as I do that this common is free, and that everything I can 
raise on it is mine ; while if I should plant on that side of 
the lence you'd clap me into jail for trespassing, or else 
you'd let me raise a crop and then take all away from me, 
unless I came to your terms. The laws seem to be made 
for you landowners ! What right had you to fence in the 
best land ? It was all common once. If you were culti- 
vating it, I wouldn't have a word to say ; your right to it is 
as good as mine, or that of anybody else ; but it's no better, 
and I don't see what right you have to keep me off of it, 
when you don't want to cultivate it yourself 

Landowner. I did cultivate it for some years, and I fenced 
it to xeep the cattle away ; I hauled off the stone and drained 
it, and got good crops. 

Labor. Did the crops repay you for what you laid out? 

Landowner. Pretty well, you may believe ; you don't sup- 
pose that I was such a fool as to make the improvements if 
I hadn't been sure of that. But I've got some better land 
that I mean to till this year, and I should like to let this lot 
to you at a fair rent. 

Labor. Yes; I suppose you have taken the cream out of 
this. But what do you call a fair rent? 

Landowner. Let me see ! The land is still a good deal 
better than the common, and easier to work than when I 
enclosed it. The drains are there, and there are no stones 
on the ground; besides, the fence is good for three years, 
and you'll have to fence your common lot if you want to 
make a crop. That's something for you to consider. These 
are real advantages. 

Labor. Yes, that's so. Well ! I think it will be fair if I 
agree to give you one-third the value of the fence ; say, ten 
bushels of potatoes, and five bushels more on account of the 
other improvements. 



340 APPENDIX. 

Landowner. Will you keep the fence in as good repair 
as it is now ? 

Labor. No ; fifteen bushels is as much as I can afford to 
give. 

Landowner. And how much will you give for the use of 
the land ? 

Labor. Nothing whatever. I pay you so much for the use 
of your improvements, and that's so much gain to you, for 
you've already been well paid for them by the crops you've 
taken off, which have diminished the fertility of the soil. 
I'm willing to pay for the benefit I shall derive from 
them, and nothing else. If you won't let me have the land 
for the fifteen bushels, I'll stick to the common ; I can do 
about as well here. But you haven't told me what right 
you had to fence in the best land, and call it yours ? 

Landowner. The king gave it to me. 

Labor. What right had the king to take away the people's 
land, and give it to you ? 

Landowner. No matter whether he had the right or not ; 
he had the might. The land is mine, and you cannot culti- 
vate it without my permission. 

Labor. Well ! We won't discuss the question of right just 
now. Will you let me have the lot for the year at the price 
I offer ? 

Landowner. Yes; you may have it. It's so much gain 
to me; but if it wasn't for that confounded common you 
should pay more. 



ANOTHER YEAR. 

{In the meanwhile Landowner has succeeded in getting 
through Parliament an Act authorizing him to enclose the com- 
mon, and has taken possession. He has accordingly fenced in 
the whole of it. Not against cattle this time, but against 
Labor.) 

Labor, going to Landowner. Please, sir, as the common is 
enclosed. I've now no free land to work upon, and I should 



ANOTHER TEAK. 341 

be very glad to hire that same lot of you for another 
year. 

Landowner. Humph! You did pretty well on that lot 
last year, didn't you ? 

Labor. Yes, sir ! I was able to give Capital a new spade, 
besides paying him for the use of his ; and I had enough 
over to keep my family in comfort after paying you the rent. 

Landowner. And you expect to get the land for the same 
rent this year ? 

Labor. I hope that you will let me have it on the same 
terms, sir. If I'm obliged to pay more I shall not be able 
to give Capital so much for the use of his spade, and my 
family will suffer for want of the comforts to which they 
have been accustomed. 

Landowner. That's none of my business. Capital must 
be content with a smaller return, and you must reduce the 
expenses of your family. There's no common for you to 
cultivate now, or for him to pasture his heifer on. You must 
both of you cut your coat according to your cloth, and wear 
your old clothes when you have no cloth. 

Labor. I'm aware of that, sir, and can only hope that 
you will consider my circumstances. 

Landowner. What I shall consider will be my own inter- 
est. I shall manage my estate on strictly business princi- 
ples. You paid me fifteen bushels of potatoes on account 
of my improvements last year. We agreed upon that as 
fair, didn't we ? 

Labor. Yes, sir. 

Landowner. Well ! I'll be easy with you and charge you 
no more this year ; but you must keep the fence in repair. 

Labor. It will be very hard on me, sir ; taking so much 
from the support of my family, but I suppose that I must do 
as you say ; and if I must, I must. 

Landowner. Now how much will you agree to give me for 
the use of my land ? Last year you wouldn't give me any- 
thing, and I had to come to your terms, because you had the 
common to fall back upon. This year there's no common, 
and you've got to come to mine. 



%!^ 



342 APPENDIX. 

Labor. I hope, sir, that they will be such as to enable me 
to live and keep my family comfortably, which will be hard 
work enough now, with the additional work I'm obliged to 
put upon the fence. 

Landowner. Comfortably ! I don't know and I don't care. 
You ought to be satisfied with the necessaries of life, and not 
talk about luxuries. But there's no use in wasting any more 
talk about the matter. The rent of the lot for this year is 
fifty bushels in all. 

Labor. But, sir, — 

Landowner. But me no Buts. That's the rent. 

Labor. We shall starve, sir, and then your land will be of 
no use to you. You must have somebody to cultivate it. 

Landowner. There's something in that ; but, as I said, 
fifty bushels is the rent. You know that you must take the 
land at my price, and I know you'll make the shift to pull 
through. If you can't, and I find that you really haven't 
enough to live on, perhaps I'll not exact the whole of the 
rent, but let a part remain in arrears, for you to make up 
when you have an extra good year, and I will give you 
some of the small potatoes in charity, to keep you alive and 
out of the poorhouse — where {aside) 1 should have to pay 
for the whole support of you and your family. 



^7/ 



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